


I Want to Start a Petition!

by Adm_Hawthorne



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Ann Hawthorne, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-10-21
Packaged: 2018-01-19 10:01:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 29
Words: 30,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1465255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adm_Hawthorne/pseuds/Adm_Hawthorne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We always hear from the royals, but what about everyone else? A few of the 'regular' people of the town of Storybrooke have had enough, and they're writing letters to the editor of the Mirror to air their grievances. They're angry and tired of taking it!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ann Hawthorne, Admin Asst. to Mayor Mills

**Author's Note:**

> Characters aren't mine. They belong to ABC, Disney, and other assorted entities of importance. I gain nothing from writing these stories but the fun of doing it. Please don't sue me.

Dear Editor:

They’re at it _again_. I’d be mad, but, at this point in my life, I’ve come to the decision that it’s better to accept things as they are and work around it. I mean, what else can I do? It’s not as though anyone is really paying attention to me. I’m not important here. Back in the Enchanted Forest, I was milkmaid.

Yes. A milkmaid.

I know what you’re thinking, and, no, I’m not 5’7” with long blonde hair done up in braids, and, no, I didn’t wear clogs or those weird little dresses with apron things down the front of them. In fact, being a milkmaid was terrible. It was dirty work, and I cannot tell you how hard it is to get the smell of cow off of you. Actually, you can’t. I smelled like a barn all the time, and bathing in the Enchanted Forest was remarkably difficult to do if you weren’t a royal because there just wasn’t a place to do it unless you lived near a body of water, which I did not.

So, for the first 25 years of my life, I lived in the White Kingdom as a milkmaid. I spent my days around cows and pigs and pig-like men and whatever other disgusting thing you can think of, and, during most of that time, I had the added bonus of either trying to dodge Queen Regina’s so-called knights to keep them from trying to use me for things other than regular milkmaid duties or trying to understand whatever ridiculous rule Snow White and Prince James had decided to implement to make things “better.”

It never made things better. Ever.

At least, with Queen Regina, the taxes did, in fact, go to helping out the towns because the officials were too scared to lie to her. With Snow White and Prince James? Pfft! Forget about it. Everything was fair game. I can’t tell you the amount of times after those two gained power that I was given the option of giving up my last penny to the tax collector or giving the filthy swine “something else.”

There was a reason why I was penniless for most of my young adult life.

To recap, in the Enchanted Forest, I was a single, filthy, penniless milkmaid who was also considered an old maid because I wasn’t married with children yet.

Yeah, my life was awesome.

When Queen Regina enacted the curse and I saw the purple smoke coming at me, I distinctly remember thinking to myself, “Well, anything has to be better than this.”

I can’t say I was wrong. Yes, I had no idea who I was for 28 years, but they were a pretty good 28 years. I’m an administrative assistant who works in the mayor’s office. It’s not glamorous, and the general rule has always been to stay out of the mayor’s way, but it’s a good job.

I’m not living in a barn anymore. I have a nice apartment, running water, electricity, and I can take a bath whenever I want. A bath! It’s like I died and went to heaven. I don’t smell like a cow, I don’t have to work every single day, I have healthcare benefits, central heat and air, and the ability to go to the store and buy whatever I want to eat as opposed to having to grow it and/or kill it myself.

Who doesn’t love that?

Working for Mayor Mills was a little touch and go for the first 5 or 10 years. After that, I found a pretty good rhythm about it, and, once the curse was broken, I was just happy to not be a milkmaid again. To this day, I still don’t understand why a fourth of the town decided to storm the mayor’s house because, frankly, we have it pretty good here, and, with the curse broken, it wasn’t like we couldn’t find a happy ending.

Not that most of us in this town were ever likely to find a happy ending in the Enchanted Forest anyway. Most ‘happily ever after’ stories apply to royals and royals alone. The rest of us lowly peasants are lucky if we didn’t die from some wretched disease before the age of 25.

I love how the Charmings and the group of what was once their council of advisors never bothered to take a poll and ask the remaining three-fourths of the population here what we wanted to do. Nope. As per the usual, they just rushed headlong into it acting as if they knew what’s best for us.

Let me tell you a thing. _They. Do. Not._

I can’t think of a single person I know personally who wants to go back to living in our filth and squalor while the royals go back to their happy endings and castles.

What’s more, when they kicked Mayor Mills out of office, which is completely illegal, by the way, they didn’t instate anyone to take her place, so the administrative staff spent months trying to keep the city running without a mayor or an interim mayor or _anything_.

I’ve forged Mayor Mills’ signature so much because of this that my own signature is starting to resemble hers.

None of the royals can leave well enough alone, and it’s starting to really tick me off. It’s not just me. It’s most of us in this town. After nearly destroying the town and us with it, they go off to Neverland and come back _with_ Peter Pan.

That’s like going to hell and deciding to bring Satan back. Who does that?!

Naturally, this all ends in everyone being forced back to the Enchanted Forest. I have no idea why nor how, but I’m sure it had to do with Mayor Mills’ son, Peter Pan, and Mr. Gold. Excuse me, make that Emma Swan’s son, Rumpelstiltskin’s father, and Rumple himself. At least, that’s what the rumors say happened. I have no idea because no one bothers to fill us in on whatever grievance of the moment is going on with the royals that is, thus, sending us to God only knows where this time.

Far be it for anyone to let the majority of the town in on what’s happening. The outside world wants to complain about the 1% having it all and forcing the other 99% to do their bidding and bend to their needs. They don’t know the meaning of the concept.

Now, of course, we can’t remember the last year of our lives, which is just about par for the course, and, naturally, there’s yet another witch to deal with. This time, it’s the Wicked Witch of the West, also known as Zelena, who, apparently, is also Mayor Mills’ half-sister.

Who needs to watch soap operas when you have this lot of royals governing the town?

Oh, and did I mention the flying monkeys? Yeah, we have those now in addition to the fairies (whom I’ve never trusted), the disproportionate amount of royals, and Emma Swan, who I choose to classify by herself because, whenever she shows up, my life gets completely turned upside-down.

Every time I see her, I just want to throw something at her and beg her to stop it. Whatever it is she’s doing, I just want her to stop because I’m tired of having to worry if I’m going to be a milkmaid again or that flying monkeys are going to poop on me. I know it’s not really her fault, but I’ll be damned if she isn’t the harbinger of whatever bad crap is about to happen to the town next.

Is it too much to ask that they royals just ignore each other and let the rest of us live in a place that has the internet?

I really don’t think it is. I mean, what do they have against us living in some kind of harmony where no one is accidentally hurt by default of getting hit by a stray fireball or something? Between the witches, the imp, and other maligned magical creatures here, Detroit is safer than Storybrooke.

Look, I’m not saying that what Queen Regina did was right, and I’m not saying that Mayor Mills is always the best mayor. In fact, I might even vote for someone else if we’d ever get a chance at an election because, you know, we live in a _democracy_ here, and, now that we know who we are, I’m pretty sure someone else would run against her.

Not Snow White.

I’d rather poke my eyes out with rusty nails than vote her in office. She tries to fix everything with love, hugs, and good wishes. There’s no way I’d voluntarily let her lead us, and I’m not **_EVEN_** sorry to say that.

I just want to live my life, go to work Monday through Friday for 9ish hours a day, have my weekends free to play online, and occasionally have a bite to eat at Granny’s Diner without having to worry about getting hurt, killed, or, worse, pulled into another drama filled event courtesy of our royals.

Is that so much to ask?

I mean, they totaled my car when Tiny came to town, and the local insurance company said that ‘destruction by giant was not a legitimate claim,’ and I loved that car. It was like my child. When Cora came to town, she magically restrained me for an hour as she riffled through Mayor Mills’ office on what I can only assume was the first day Cora arrived. She was clearly doing some kind of reconnaissance. Frankly, I didn’t actually care what she was doing. I cared that I couldn’t feel my hands and feet, and I honestly thought she was going to kill, but, luckily, she thought I was too low in class to bother with killing.

Thank you. It’s good to know how valuable I am as a person, as if I didn’t know that already.

Right now, things would be great if Zelena wasn’t in the picture because, again, there are flying monkeys. I’m pretty sure one of them ate my neighbor’s dog. I’m not sorry about that, either. The little shit barked all the time. Really, it was more of a blessing for him to suddenly ‘disappear.’

That said, Regina Mills is actually our mayor again, the Charmings are too busy with the pregnancy to bother trying to ‘help’ with governing the town, and, thanks to the fact Henry has no idea who he actually is, Emma Swan is too preoccupied with keeping it that way to bother with anything else outside of taking out the Wicked Witch.

That’s all fine and dandy, but, if I wind up in the Enchanted Forest _one more time_ , I’m going to lose it. I mean it. I have had enough of this bullshit. One more time of being forced to go somewhere and do something I don’t want to do because it falls in line with what the royals’ trauma drama is doing, and I’m going to start an uprising. Yup, I’m going to blow it all up, and I’m going to have help.

The townsfolk are tired. We want off this rollercoaster. I may just be an administrative assistant, or a milkmaid, but even we low-on-the-totem-pole people have feelings and rights. We do! I think it’s getting about time the royals were reminded they’re not the only people affected by the dumb shit they do.

I’m going to start with a petition. Anyone want to sign?

With much frustration,

Ann Hawthorne


	2. Kelly Dawson, Forester

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, so, apparently, this is just going to be an ongoing thing I write on.

Dear Editor,

I live in the woods along the outskirts of town, and, unlike that Robin guy and his band of merry whatevers (I’m not judging), I have an actual house there. It’s the same place I’ve lived ever since Regina decided to go completely nutballs and send us all here.

It’s not much. I mean, it’s not a castle or anything like that, but it _is_ my home, and I really like. You know what else I really like? I like being able to actually _get_ to my home, which, apparently Regina has something against.

There I was at Mike’s Grocery picking up a few odds and ends before swinging through the gaming store to pick up a copy of _Deadpool_ for my PC when I hear people start talking about how Regina is now buds with Emma Swan and the Charmings, which I think is cool. It’s great to bury the hatchet, just as long as it’s not in each other, you know?

I’m digging on the idea that maybe our resident royals are going to finally chill with each other and, maybe, figure out a way to get rid of Zelena and her flying flea circuses when I hear another rumor come flying through the pipes. Regina is going to teach Swan how to use her magic.

At first, I was like, “F--k yeah! Learn that magic and take that crazy green b---h out!” But then I started thinking about it, and suddenly it wasn’t such a cool idea because, let’s be real here, anytime someone starts up with magic around here, one of the regular citizens of Storybrooke winds up hurt, dead, or turned into a flying monkey or something.

I like being alive _and_ being human, so I decide to take off from the gaming store and head home because no one ever goes out to my little cabin. In this world, I’m a forester. In the other place, I worked as a barmaid. Guess which one I like more.

ANYWAY, I head back home, and I get to the bridge that crosses this stupidly dangerous ravine, which, honestly, I don’t even get what that’s about. I mean, when Regina created this town, what was going through her mind when she made that? You guys know what ravine I’m talking about. Was she all, “Oh, if someone pisses me off too much, I can just push them down the ravine… OF DEATH,” or what?

Whatever, my point is that my place is on the other side of the ravine, which I now can no longer get to because THE F—KING BRIDGE IS GONE. _It’s gone_.

The only way to get to my place without going, literally, 15 miles out of the way is completely, 100% gone.

What the actual f—k?

So I head back into town and find out that the magic lesson Regina was giving Swan ended with Regina _taking out my bridge_ , and she didn’t even bother to fix it. I mean, come on! You have freaking magic. You can fix a damned bridge.

I can’t even. I’m all out of cans. Seriously. All. Out. Of. Cans. I, literally, _cannot_ with this BS anymore.

Other people live here, you know? It’s not just Regina, the people Regina directly hates, and whatever bad-guy-of-the-week decides to show up to make Regina’s life crap.

I called city hall and got Ann Hawthorne on the phone to tell her about the bridge. I swear to God, I think she busted something trying not to sound as pissed off as I’m pretty sure she is. Apparently, it’s going to take several thousand dollars and at least a month to put in another bridge, which just sucks.

Regina Mills is the _mayor_. She should know better. Our taxes are already stupid high, and now we have to pay for magical incidents _she_ caused, which _she could fix_? What is this crap?

I am so done with all of this. I mean, like, I’m 1,000% done, not even 100%. _A thousand percent done_. Can’t we have ONE week where nothing happens to us? I miss the good old days when I thought I was a forester who had lived in Maine all my life. At least nothing got magically destroyed all the damned time.

I have no f—ks left to give. I’m with Ann. I’m up for signing her petition, and then I’m down for duct taping it to the royals’ foreheads.

Stuck in hell,

Kelly Dawson


	3. Pilar Gonzalez, Level 2 Housecat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm amusing myself with these, and it's fun to write in other people's voices. Yes, these are real people I know, and, yeah, I guess it's kind of Mary Sue-ish. Hopefully, you're enjoying these letters despite that fact. :-)

Dear Editor,

OMG, okay, like, I normally don't do this kind of thing, but I just HAD to write this because I don't even know what is going on anymore.

So, like, I'm sitting at the diner having a cup of coffee because Granny's coffee is awesome, but not her lasagna. That's just… ew, gross. I don't know what's going with that, but there's no way that sh-t's not from a box, but whatever. Anyway, I'm sitting at the diner at that little bar thing they have at the front minding my own business when Henry Mills walks up to me and starts talking to me.

Like THE Henry Mills is talking to  _me_ , and I'm thinking to myself, "Don't talk to talk.  _Why_  are you talking to me? OMG WHY ARE YOU TALKING TO ME? I'm not even supposed to know who you are. Is, like, your name even Mills now or is it Swan? Crap, why is he talking to me? Sh-t, I hope I don't get killed or something because he's talking to me."

And I'm sitting there, trying not to freak out, while he asks me what's good to eat at the diner besides the hamburgers, which is just SO weird because NOBODY ever talks to me. Like what? And I'm all trying to act cool because we're apparently not supposed to know who he is even though the entire freaking town knows who he is, and I'm just about to answer him and tell him to stick with the burgers because that sign about the best lasagna in town is a total lie when, out of nowhere – like a  _freaking ninja_  – Regina Mills just all pops up in our business and answers for me.

And, like, I'm not  _even_  mad because it's Regina Mills, and she's just so, you know, like… I don't know. She's  _her_ , and she's a badass, and there's no way I'm going to piss her off. But, like her son, or I guess  _not_  her son now, or whatever… Anyway,  _Henry_  just gives her this polite smile and tells her thanks and then  _he freaking ignores her_  to talk to me.

What is  _that_  about?

I was like, I don't even know what to do! I mean, on one hand, we're all supposed to act like Henry is just this random teenager, but, on the other hand, no one in their right mind is going to do anything to tick Regina off because… whoa …I  _do not_  want to end up extra crispy. You know what I mean? But what's really  _completely_ sad about the whole thing is that she looked like someone kicked her puppy, and I just didn't know what to do because she was just so sad, and it was all just really sad!

Is it weird to want to hug the Evil Queen? It's weird, isn't it?

Man, why don't the royals send out emails or text messages or something on how they expect us to act around Henry? I mean,  _hello_ , it's not like we can read their minds. They expect all of us to just know all this sh-t, and how even is that going to happen when no one tells anyone anything unless it's some fluffy BS piece on 'Good Morning Storybrooke,' which I don't even watch because Dr. Whale gives me the creeps.

But, whatever, my point is I was sitting in the diner with Regina Freaking Mills in all her perfect, amazing, whateven-ness standing there next to me and her kid, who doesn't even know who she is, sitting on the other side of me, and I was in the middle, and it sucked. Like, what is my life that this kind of thing happens?

Seriously, what is my life? Oh. My. God. I just wanted to make a run for it. It's totally not fair that we have to stand around and act like everything is all hunky-dory fine because the kid doesn't know what's going on. It's NOT fine, okay? We have freaking… flying witches on brooms and giants that aren't giant anymore and were-monkey things and, God, like  _so_  many fairies and crap that I don't even understand how anyone goes around this town and  _doesn't_ realize something's up.

Come on, I can't be the only person who is thinking something is totally wrong with Henry that he hasn't realized by now that this town is f—ked up. Like, where are they keeping him that he hasn't noticed all this weird sh-t that goes on? They have him hanging out with a guy with a hook for a hand that dresses like he's into some kind of weird BDSM sh-t, and the kid doesn't think anything is really off? Seriously?

There's no  _way_ , so why do we have to act like everything is fine when it  _clearly_  isn't just because ONE person in this messed up town doesn't know what the f—k is going on? I don't get it. I mean, hey, if I had the choice to not know what the hell was going on in this town but still got to stay here with electricity, running water, and coffee, I'd  _totally_  take it, but I can't. So… hey, whatever, I'm just saying that it's messed up that the rest of the town, all 99.9% of us, have to pretend to be some normal-ass town in southern Maine for this one kid.

Who decided he was more important than the rest of us anyway? I don't see him trying to deal with all the BS that goes on in this town or having to repair all the damage after one of his moms goes postal or trying to find a job in a town that hasn't had anything new come into it in THIRTY YEARS. Our economy is, like, nonexistent.

Couldn't we get a Starbucks or something? A Burger King? A Denny's? ANYTHING? You know, if everyone and their mom's dog wasn't trying to kill Regina and her family all the freaking time, maybe the magic people in the 1% could sit down and figure out how to keep us from losing our memories when we cross the town line, and THEN we could, you know, LEAVE and go do stuff.

F—k the Charmings. I don't want to go back to that sh-t hole. The Enchanted Forest can go f—k itself for all I care, and who are they and their little band of dwarves to decide for the rest of us whether or not we need to go back or stay or whatever? I can make my own decisions, thank you very much.

And, like, I think Regina probably has a bad rap. She  _did_  send us to a place that gives us cleaning supplies and Netflix, which, frankly, I like a whole lot better than staring at a donkey pulling a plow all day. And, also, she's kind of hot. I mean, like… no… yes… whatever. Yeah, fine. I'm saying it. She's hot. We all know it. She's f—king gorgeous, and she was a pretty good mayor, so, as long as she's not blowing sh-t up or killing people or any of the other crap she did as the queen, then I say leave her alone and let her do her job.

Which brings me back to the diner thing with Henry. What the hell? Did we not learn  _anything_  from history? When Regina is depressed, unhappy, and doesn't think she's got any hope at all, we end up being cursed for 28 years. Be honest, people; who here thinks it's a good idea to keep Henry from getting his memories back? Like, we need to talk about the greater good here, okay? He needs his memories back so he remembers Regina so Regina doesn't crackup again and decide to send us all to Wonderland or some sh-t.

I don't want to go to Wonderland. I don't want go back to the Enchanted Forest. I want to stay here, do my own thing, and live someplace where polio or TB isn't likely to kill me.

Is that too much to ask? No. I don't that's too much to ask.

So, like, Ann Hawthorne needs to cough up that petition, and there should totally be a disclaimer in there about how they need to work on Henry getting his memories back so Regina doesn't fly off the handle and do something else to all of us.

Seriously, sign me up.

Stuck in the Middle,

Pilar Gonzalez  
Level 2 Housecat (Don't ask)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, reviews are appreciated.


	4. R. C. Walrack, City Comptroller

Dear Editor,

The average cost per mile for milling and resurfacing a 2 lane road with 5 foot paved shoulders in the United States is $416,437.91. That means the cost to repair the blacktop when Regina Mills decided to use a locator spell utilizing setting tire tracks on fire in order to follow a trail was approximately $6,646,568.65. I say approximately because the cost for repair to the road inside the actual town was a bit less than $416,437.91, but not by much.

The approximate cost of repairing the damage caused by Tiny when he was in giant form was roughly $35,000.00, which is higher than the average cost of damage done by a tornado.

The cost of repairing the town after the potential self-destruction episode was approximately $30,000, which is a touch less than the average cost of damage done by a tornado, and one would think there wouldn't be any damage once the self-destruct mechanism was deactivated and everything reverted back. One would think incorrectly.

The average cost of street cleaning is $30 per curb mile, and we've had to increase the frequency of cleaning lately due to the monkey situation. At present, our costs by the end of the year will be roughly $114,680.00.

The cost of repairing the clock tower will be approximately $12,000.00. The cost of rebuilding the suspension bridge is roughly $20,000, including labor.

In total, our town has accumulated approximately $6,858,248.65 in costs exceeding our predicted 5 year budget over the course of the past 2 and a half years.

In short, if the royals keep this up, we're going to go broke.

Our economy is stagnate. There are no new jobs, no opportunities for advancement unless someone dies, and no possibility of new employment opportunities coming into our town. Unless or until the royals and magic users decide to focus on the town's actual issues and less on their personal vendettas against each other, our town will never have a chance to get our economy up and running.

The fact we've been able to sustain ourselves for this long is only because we've all been essentially living the same day for the past 28 years. If we all do the exact same thing day in and day out, it creates an equalizing factor on the economy, which allows for a basic equilibrium between city costs and city expenditure, but that isn't the case anymore. We're no longer automatons, and it is clearly showing in our town's budget.

We could increase taxes, but I believe that will only lead to deficits elsewhere in the budget as the town strains to cover the costs of housing subsidies, public health, and other costs associated with people who no longer make enough to sustain them from paycheck to paycheck.

To put it succinctly, our town's money has been precariously balanced for nearly 3 decades.

The first new money our town saw was when Emma Swan bought a hot cocoa at Granny's Diner that first time. That $1.50 was the first new money our economy had ever seen.

When you think about it, that is positively shocking.

Yes, there's been an ebb and flow as gasoline, natural gas, and other such supplies whose costs rise or fall, but that doesn't really contribute to our overall issue, which is the fact we're about to go broke as a town because the people in charge continue to cause directly, or indirectly, massive amounts of destruction to the town.

In addition, since the curse broke, our supplies are dwindling. Now that outsiders cannot see Storybrooke whatsoever, basic needs such as gasoline, groceries, and other such products are becoming premium commodities. The rules of supply and demand are evidently clear. A tube of toothpaste now costs nearly $8.00 a tube when it once only cost a couple of dollars.

As a town, we're in a bad spot, and it is only going to get worse unless something changes drastically very soon. Either the magic users need to put their considerable talents to good use and create the items we're running low on and the Mayor and City Council need to find ways to get our economy going without outside help, or the royals and magic users need to start considering ways to de-cloak our town and open the boarders.

I'm not pointing this out to cause a mass panic, but I feel it is imperative the citizens of Storybrooke understand what is happening with regard to their money. We are slowly building up to a critical situation, and it seems completely irresponsible and reckless to me that those who seem to deem themselves in charge and who, in fact, do hold a great deal of power and influence are doing nothing to rectify this situation.

I understand their primary focus is attending to the situation with Zelena. However, Zelena is only out to destroy a single individual, not our entire town, which is more than I can say for the royalty of the town based on their actions over the past few years.

However, having written that, I realize most of us don't actually know what Zelena wants. We only know what we've heard through rumors, what we've speculated on, and what some of us were witness to when Regina was thrown through the clock tower. If Zelena does, in fact, want to destroy the town, all she really need do is wait about six months to a year, and the town will destroy itself with very little, if any, help needed from the wicked.

I would say the good citizens of Storybrooke elected me in order to maintain their taxes and levy appropriately, but we all know that's a falsification. I, like everyone else, was placed in my role by the curse, but I do take my job very seriously.

Right now, I feel my hands are tied. Please, I encourage each and every one of you to speak to the City Council members, the Mayor, and anyone else you think has sway so that something happens before the town goes bankrupt. I implore you for your help in this matter.

If we want to continue to live in Storybrooke as opposed to going back to the Enchanted Forest, or, worse still, living in a town with no resources, no way to acquire resources, and no hope of anything getting better, then we must take care of our town. It is in dire need of assistance.

Please feel free to contact me at any time if you need more information on this very dangerous situation.

Yours in good faith,

R. C. Walrack  
City Comptroller

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, those are real estimated dollar amounts. Crazy, huh?
> 
> As always, reviews are appreciated.


	5. Norma Peterson, Wife and Militia Maid

Dear Editor,

Ever since the Lost Boys arrived, my lawn gnome keeps appearing in various places around town, and I realize this isn't a big thing to anyone, but it's a big thing to me. That lawn gnome happens to be my husband who, thanks in complete part to the Evil Queen, was turned into a lawn ornament shortly before she cursed the town to this realm.

Now, I try to be a pretty laid back kind of person. I don't like to start trouble, I pay my bills on time, and I attend church every Sunday, despite the fact I can't stand Blue. But it's getting to a point where I can't put my husband anywhere without the Lost Boys finding him and sticking him some place utterly ridiculous.

Last week, I locked him in my house, and I found him at the ice cream parlor. He was on top of the building. Do you know how dangerous that is? What if he'd fallen? There's no fixing that. I'd have no chance of ever getting my husband back. True, he is a statue, but he wasn't always a statue, and, if I could ever get an appointment to speak to Mayor Mills, I  _might_  have a chance of getting him restored.

Obviously, that's not going to happen any time soon because of the Wicked Witch, but, at some point, I'd like to give it a try. I called City Hall a couple of days ago to set up an appointment to see the Mayor, and Ms. Hawthorne, the administrative assistant for Mayor Mills, tells me the waiting list to see the mayor is several weeks long. Weeks!

It's so frustrating trying to get anything accomplished in this town. Every time I call the sheriff's station to ask for help in finding my husband or doing something about the Lost Boys, all I get is the station's answering machine. The amount of time it takes before I can actually leave a message tells me no one has checked those messages in days.

I don't understand who thought it would be a good idea to have the entire police force comprised of a single family who is more likely to be absent from their duties as law enforcement professionals than they are to ever be available.

I called the current sheriff, David Nolan, not fewer than six times in the past four days trying to get him to do something about those hooligans taking off with my husband. When he finally returned my call, he told me he'd looked into it, but he didn't have a lot of time right now. Then, he proceeded to assure me that I understood the reasons why he didn't have time, and, before I could protest that I did not, in fact, understand why he couldn't do his job, he hung up on me.

Of course, we all understand that Mr. Nolan is having a family crisis right now, but that doesn't mean the town can be without a police force. The least they could do is hire a few deputies that aren't related to the royal family.

The Queen's personal guard is here in Storybrooke. Why can't they be the law enforcement body? Goodness knows they'd at least be available to follow up on robberies, assaults, and the like while the royals are off gallivanting about trying to be the heroes of the day.

The Sheriff's Department and the Mayor's Office have a duty to the people of this town, and that duty is composed of more than fighting over who has custody rights to that boy or trying to make some other royal completely and utterly miserable.

In this realm, they're public servants. Meaning  _they_  are supposed to be serving  _us_. It isn't supposed to be the other way around. This, along with dozens of other reasons, is why I have absolutely no desire to go back to the Enchanted Forest. The royals are always so self absorbed. At least here, in this realm, the rest of us have a chance of hope that our basic needs will be addressed.

Of course, I'm clearly being obtuse because my husband still keeps disappearing, and those hooligans are still running around town as if they don't need to go to school or get job. If our public servants were actually being public servants, the Lost Boys would have been put somewhere that would keep them from breaking into people's homes and stealing their things, or, in my case, continually stealing my husband.

We need an actual police force. We need a Mayor's Office that functions, and, if the people who are in those positions right now can't do their job because they've once again invited some sort of overly dramatic situation into their lives by default of who they are, then I think they should give the office up and let someone who can do the job actually do the job while the royals go off doing whatever it is they do that causes so much excessive collateral damage to this town.

I know for a fact I'm not the only person that feels this way. There are plenty of us who are sick and tired of taking a back seat to the riff-raff of this town, which is quite a bit considering how small the town is, while our law enforcement agency is tied up chasing after a woman on a flying stick.

Something needs to be done, and it needs to happen sooner than later because the next time my husband comes up missing, I'm going to start tasering Lost Boys until they tell me what they've done with him this time. If the Sheriff's Department isn't going to do anything, then I surely am because I'm tired of living day-to-day wondering what's going to happen next due to a lack of police presence.

Starting the Militia,

Norma Peterson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, and, as always, reviews are appreciated.


	6. Tom Billings, 12th Grader

Dear Editor,

Hi, my name is Thomas Billings, but my friends call me Tom, and I’m in high school in the 12th grade right now. My English teacher is making me write this letter for extra credit so I can graduate, but, honestly, I’m not sure I want to graduate.

I mean, yeah, I’m tired of being in high school because it sucks. I’ve been reading the same book for English class for what feels like forever. I can quote whole pages of _Brave New World_ , which also sucks. Who cares about some guy who couldn’t handle not living in a dumb place that doesn’t have any modern conveniences? The dude needs to suck it up. I’ve lived in a place without plumbing, and it stinks. It actually stinks. The smell is something between my dog’s farts and rotted food with a little something like rotten eggs thrown in just to mix it up.

It’s nasty, and I don’t get why anyone would want to go back to that because I don’t. I want to stay some place I can hang out with my friends, play some games, and maybe skate. I say maybe because that old lady that runs the diner is always running outside and yelling at us for skating in front of her place. Like it matters. It’s not like we have anywhere else to eat in this crappy little town.

Not that I’m complaining because I’m not. In the Enchanted Forest, I was working for my dad as an apprentice. He was a blacksmith, and that totally sucked. My body hurts just thinking about all the work I had do from before the sun came up until super late at night because my dad also had some farm animals, and I had to take care of those, too. Oh yeah, add pig poop to the list of reasons why the EF stinks.

Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is that I’m really okay with not going back to the EF, but I don’t think I’m okay with graduating because I don’t know what to do next. When you watch TV or go see a movie about people who graduate from high school, they always go to college, or they get a job. Usually, they move out of their parents’ place, too.

But what am I going to do? I’ve been checking around with the kids that graduated last year, and they’re all stuck where they were before they graduated. Most of them don’t even have jobs, and they're looking but no one is hiring except that animal place Mr. Nolan was working at before he became a deputy. I asked. They already have 25 people who sent in resumes for that job. I think a lot of them are people like me or the ones who’ve already graduated. We don’t have a college, and it’s not like I can leave to go to college, so that’s totally out. I have no idea what I’d major in anyway. I guess I haven’t thought about it much since the first curse broke because I always knew I wouldn’t be able to go to college, so it didn’t matter.

My girlfriend is really upset about it, though. She wants to be a teacher, which means you have to go to college. In the EF, she worked with her mom making candles, which was a pretty good job, but she says she doesn’t want to do anything that involves standing over “vats of hot wax for hours on end holding a taper and dipping it over and over and over again until you want to kill yourself.”

I guess I can get that because I don’t want to stand beside a forge all day and hit a hot piece of metal with a hammer over and over again until I want to kill myself. Besides, by the time I wanted to kill myself, I was too tired to move, so it didn’t mattered anyway.

I don’t know what to do. I know what I don’t want to do, but that’s not helping me out. I might be able to get work at the stables or as a farmhand, but that’s as bad as being an apprentice blacksmith, just in a different way. The construction business is always hiring, but that’s because people get hurt a lot when they’re doing repair work to the town, and I don’t really want to die because Ms. Mills decided today was the day she was going to set something on fire.

Even if I did get a job, there’s nowhere for me to move. I’d still be living with my parents, which I hate. I want my own place. I want to be able to do stuff like walk around without pants on and not have to worry about my mom gripping at me to put clothes on. I want to be able drink straight out of the carton because it’s MY carton in MY place. I want to stay up as long as I want, and I want to be able to watch whatever I want to watch on TV or online, even if it’s porn. I’m practically an adult. I should be able to watch porn in peace.

That’s not happening right now, and it’s not ever going to happen. We’re all going to be stuck in this town forever, and I’m going to be living with my parents until they die. I’ll probably end up working my dad’s job. He’s a fence builder here.

The work isn’t great, the pay sucks, and he barely makes enough to support us. I thought the whole point of life was to leave your kids better off than you were, isn’t it? I guess in this town it’s not because I’m pretty sure I’m going to take over my dad’s place when he’s too old to do it anymore, which is exactly what would have happened in the EF, and that absolutely sucks.

I don’t want to be what my dad is. I want to do something else with my life. I want to do something that doesn’t have me working for 10 hours a day doing manual labor. I’m not a peasant anymore, and I don’t want to be treated like one. I want to be treated like a person.

See? This is why I don’t think about this stuff because it makes me angry, and there’s nothing I can do to fix it. There’s nothing anyone can do to fix it unless you’re a magic person, but they don’t seem like they really care about people like me. They have other stuff to worry about, which I guess I understand. I get I’m not as important as Sheriff Swan or Mrs. Blanchard, but sometimes I wish I was.

Sometimes, I wonder what it’d be like for someone who is actually important in this town to notice me or my girlfriend and do something to help us out so we’re not still living with our parents when we’re 50, which makes me angry at myself. I’m supposed to be a man about this stuff and not be all whiny about how I can’t do something. My dad says I need to “make my own way,” but every time I think I maybe have found a way to do that, something happens or I realize that I can’t do it because my parents don’t have enough money to help me pay for it or it’ll take me forever to save for it or I can’t do it because we don’t access to the stuff I’d need to do whatever because the entire town is in lockdown.

I guess I’m frustrated and angry and maybe a little sad, but I’ll get over it. I have to because I graduate soon, and then I’m going to have to do something. My English teacher, Mrs. McCuller, says I should think outside the box. She says maybe I should think about ways to start up something instead of looking for it from someone else. I think she’s just trying to give me busy work most of the time when she says that, but maybe she’s onto something?

My girlfriend and I have been talking about the fact this town doesn’t have a coffee shop, and I know a few people like me who want to do something besides what their parents are doing. There’s an empty shop on the town square that’s been empty for as long as I can remember. It’d be a great spot for a coffee place with free wi-fi.

Maybe we can do that? I don’t know if we could get the coffee and stuff for the shop, though, but I guess it’s worth looking into. It’s not college, but it’s also not manual labor like my dad is doing. I just have to figure out how to get the money to get it started. I wonder if Ms. French would back us? I think she has Mr. Gold’s money now, and she’s a lot nicer and prettier to look at.

I wonder if she also has Mr. Gold’s magic stuff, too, because, if my girl and I try to start up a business on the town square, I want it magically protected from every kind of damage I can think of. That’s probably pretty smart considering all the stuff that happens in this town.

Lost and restless,

Tom Billings

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, reviews are appreciated.


	7. Billy Jack Brumley, Rancher

Dear Editor,

Worked on a farm all my life, and I do mean  _all_  my life. Back in the Enchanted Forest, my job was what you'd call animal husbandry, and I was pretty good at it, too. In fact, you might even call me the best, and that's not just me bragging, either. I was in charge of the royal livestock during the rule of three different monarchs, and not a single one ever had a reason to replace me.

Here in Storybrooke, I'm a cattle rancher, and I'm pretty good at that, too. For round about 30 years now I've been tending to my cattle and my little side business with my chickens without much problem at all. People got to eat, and people like to eat meat and eggs and chicken. I got a good life here, and I had a good life back there, too.

And I reckon I don't care if we're here or there so long as I get to keep doing what I've been doing this whole time, and I really don't care about all the fuss over whether or not we're going to be shoved from one realm back to another or not. If it happens, it happens. Not much we can do about it either way, so why is everyone so up in arms over it all?

The way I see it, we might could worry about it, and we'd spend a whole lot of time trying to figure out ways to fight against something we can't do nothing about, or we just live our lives from day to day and be thankful that we're alive to keep doing it.

Now, I've been reading this paper every morning since we got here, and here recently these letters to the editor are starting to get a on my very last nerve. I know no one asked me, but I'm going to give my two cents anyway because it seems to me like everyone else is whether any of us really want them to or not.

What I keep thinking every time I pick up this paper here recently is that the whole lot of us just need to quit our bellyaching and go on about our business. Yeah, it's true that we're at the mercy of the royalty around here, but that's nothing new, and it's also true that we have to pay for all the bullsh-t they seem to stir up on a pretty regular basis, but that's also nothing new either.

Why are we all of the sudden complaining about something we've had to do since we were born? It don't make no sense to me. Instead of heming and hawing around about things that haven't changed in hundreds of years regardless of what realm we live in, why aren't we more focused on the things we can actually do something about?

For instance, my nephew graduated high school two years ago, and he's still living with his mamma because the best work he can find is working for me, and I can't pay that much. What kind of life is that? Why aren't we focused on fixing that? Or how about the fact the only mailbox we got in town was run over by a truck a couple days ago? Maybe we should be thinking about something to do with that gang of Lost Boys that've been tearing through town lately?

What we need to be is a little more independent and little less into all these self-pity parties, if you ask me. I don't rely on nobody else but me to get my work done on the ranch, and I don't see why it should be any different with the town. If we're down, then we need to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and go on about our rat killing. It's time for us to do our own danged work and forget about relying on the royalty. They've never helped us in the past, so why are we expecting anything different now?

I'm not normally one to talk a whole bunch. I like to think of myself as a man of few words. I believe in action over talking too much, but it seems to me that all the action happening in Storybrooke over the past couple of years has been all blow up and no progress. It might be time to do more than run whenever we see a big cloud of magic coming our way. I, for one, am fixin' to take a stand here and now and make it clear as day that I don't think the Charmings nor the Mills are the ones that need to step up and fix what ails us here. We need to do it ourselves. 

I tell you what, there is nothing more frustrating to me than a workhand that just gripes and complains all day long but doesn't do anything to make things better, and, right now, that's all this town is. It's a bunch of lazy workhands that don't want to get their hands a little dirty. They just want to push it off onto someone else to do it.

That ain't how it works. Didn't work like that back home, and it don't work like that here. You want the town fixed, then get to fixing it, but don't just sit there and gripe about it. Like I said, it's just like working on the ranch. If I want a better quality steer, then I have to make sure I breed the right bull and the right cow so I get a stronger, sturdier animal than what I started with. If we want a better town, then we need to breed one out of what we got, not hope something better comes along.

Our lives haven't ever been a bed of roses, and that probably isn't ever going to change, so we just need to make the best out of a bad situation.

Tired of the Whiners,

Billy Jack Brumley

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, reviews are appreciated.


	8. Mario Rodriquez, Baker

Dear Editor,

The other day, I was taking a shortcut through town, and I happened to go down the alley back behind Mr. Gold’s shop. George Fincus was laying out on the ground with a bad wound on his head, and he was calling out for help. Before I could get to him, one of the nuns was just suddenly there. She looked him over, made a face, shook her head, and waved her wand over his head, which healed the wound.

George thanked her and then he started to ask her for a different kind of help. He told he was having a hard way of things, it seemed like the entire world was out to get him or was at least against him, and he wondered if there was anyone out there that gave a damn. He literally reached up to her and asked her for, essentially, a little spiritual support.

She looked him straight in the eye and said, “I wish I could, but Blue has specifically told us you are not to be helped.” I kid you not. That is exactly what she said. I thought he was going to start crying right where he was laying, but, instead, he asked her why. She told him, “Because your heart has darkened, and nothing we can do will be able to help you. I have healed your wounds, but I can’t guide you. Your path is already set.” Then she popped out again.

In the Enchanted Forest, George was a pirate. Here, he’s just a guy who works in construction. He doesn’t harm anybody, and I don’t think he’s so much as had a parking ticket for the 30 years he’s been here, but he has had a hard life here. His wife was killed when Tiny went on that rampage. His son won’t talk to him, and I don’t know why, but I always got the impression it was something George couldn’t do anything about, and he keeps getting hurt on the job. I don’t know why he was hurt like that when I saw him, but I saw a couple of Lost Boys running past me before I turned to go down the alley, so I suppose we can all take a guess.

It seems to me that a nun, of all people, would be more than willing to help a man who clearly needs the kind of help George does. He’s not a bad guy. It’s just that his life has been a series of really unfortunate situations which he has felt like he had no control over, and I can completely understand why he feels like the universe is against him all the time. Is there anyone in this town who can’t?

But, because Blue decided George wasn’t worth saving, the other fairies can’t help him any more than healing whatever physical thing is wrong with him. As fairies, I’ll just have to deal with that answer, but, _as nuns_ , they have taken an oath to help the poor, impoverished, and those in need. If Archie Hopper is bound by the oath of his office, then so should the nuns be, but apparently they aren’t held to that standard.

Nothing they do is helpful to the greater good anymore, if it ever was, which I’m starting to doubt. Blue’s approach toward who is and isn’t worthy of help is both arrogant and condescending. She heals those she deems fit to be healed and helps guide those she thinks are most worthy, but she doesn’t help those of us who actually need the help, the ones like George who need the guidance because they’ve seemingly lost their way more so than others.

When we were in the Enchanted Forest, I always wondered why, when some wished upon a star, their wish was granted while others never seemed to ever receive their wishes. It disgusts me to finally know the reason. Some weren’t helped because they were considered lost causes before anything was ever done to even try to give them help.

Now I have to wonder how many of our villains or supposed ‘bad guys’ could have turned out differently if Blue, in her magnanimous ways, had decided they were worth giving a chance or two to. How many of us have lived in ghastly conditions in which we were abused in some honestly horrific way and wished on that blue star every single night but never received help? Does that mean she thought none of us were worth saving? And why is it that those she does seem to ‘save’ all turn out to be royalty or have the ear of royalty?

At this point, I’m so angry I don’t know what to do with myself.

We live in a bubble. Word gets around quickly as to who is doing what, and I think it’s safe to say that many of us have heard the tale of Blue stepping in to heal Regina after whatever happened with Pan’s minions down at the docks, but no one can help George Fincus?

You know what I think about all of this? I think Blue and her fairies can suck it. Whatever faith I had in the potential good they could do has been completely overshadowed by knowing that this is how they treat those in most need.

I’m not a nun or a priest or anyone else who has taken an oath to help those who need it. I’m just a guy who works in the bakery, but I’m a guy who works in the bakery that has lost all respect for the nuns of this town and all faith in thinking anyone with any supposed importance is out to actually help us “small people.”

I’m helping George myself because he is a good man. I don’t think anyone’s ever bothered to help him see when he’s in a good place as opposed to always pointing out when he’s not, so I’m going to start helping him see the good in his life.

I’m starting a support group that anyone who feels like they need help of any kind is welcome to attend.

If you need anything, even if it’s just to talk about how you feel or complain about the weather, I’m here for you. You can call me or text me day or night. I think just about everyone has my number, but, if you don’t, it’s 555-253-1521. Jake Stankowicz, the bakery owner, has offered up the bakery for Wednesday night meetings. I’m going to start holding them weekly at 6PM.

I asked George if I could write this letter and tell what happened, and he said yes because he wants to be part of the solution instead of part of the apathetic problem that seems to be the norm for Storybrooke.

If those who’ve taken oaths to help the poor and impoverished, be that financially or spiritualty, won’t do what they’ve said they would, then I think it’s time those of us who do actually give a damn should pick up that slack. If you want to help be a sponsor, please let me know. I welcome you, as well.

This town is a ticking time bomb for all kinds of moral and social decay because we have nowhere to go and nothing new to really do. We need to support each other, not deny support to those who are asking for it.

And Blue, if you’re reading this, I hope you feel shame.

With faith in the townspeople of Storybrooke,  
Mario Rodriquez 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *cough* So... I may blame Blue a little for not at least trying to help Regina... >_>


	9. Linda Palmer, Mom and Housewife

Dear Editor,

With all the negativity recently in the 'Letters to the Editor' section, I thought it'd be nice to send in a letter about something positive and uplifting that happened to my family the other day.

It was a Saturday, and my son Danny and I were playing in the park. My wife was at work, so it was just the two of us, and everything was going well when Danny accidentally lost control of the ball we were playing catch with. It rolled into the street.

My son has never been one to think before he does, unfortunately for both me and my wife. He's only 5, but he's already as stubborn as a teenager. Sometimes I worry what he'll be like when he's actually a teenager. True to nature, he started to run out into the street to get his ball, and I took off running after him as I yelled at him to stop.

Of course, he didn't listen, and I started to panic. I saw the car coming, and I saw my son start to step off the curb. I was positive I was about to witness my child's death or a horrific accident when, suddenly, the car stopped moving.

I don't mean it hit the brakes. I mean it  _stopped moving_. I couldn't believe it. I was so shocked it took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. There, in the middle of the street, stood Regina Mills herself with her hand held out in front of her and her other arm wrapped protectively around my son.

She had stopped the car using magic. She saved my son's life.  _Regina Mills saved Danny's life._

At first, I was afraid she was going to take Danny. I was sort of frozen in my tracks, not knowing what I should do. I watched her ignore the driver, who was yelling out apologies through their open window, and she turned to Danny, squatted down to be eyelevel with him, and gave the gentlest smile I think I've ever seen on anyone. She spoke to him for a moment and then looked up right at me.

She stood up, scooped Danny into her arms, and walked out of the street and toward me, waving her free hand in the air, which I'm guessing unfroze the car because the engine roared back to life.

I watched her come my way with my son held protectively in her arms, and, when she finally got to me, she said, "Next time, be sure he's on the side away from traffic when you play catch. I can't always be around to stop oncoming cars."

I nodded, thanking her over and over again for saving Danny, and she just gave a little nod and turned to leave. It was about then that my son started to cry. Regina turned back and gave him a deep look of consideration. She asked him what was wrong, and he said he didn't get his ball.

She glanced to me, but I didn't really know what to tell her. His priorities are a little off, as 5 years olds' priorities tend to be. She looked back to Danny, gave him that gentle smile again, held her hand up, and the ball appeared in a cloud of purple smoke in her palm, which delighted my son, who said, "Thank you, nice lady!" before taking it and holding it in his hands to play with while he ignored the adults.

She looked so startled and surprised. For a second, I thought she might cry. It took her maybe a second or two to answer, but she finally told him he was welcomed, reminded me to be more careful, and then she walked away as if nothing incredible had happened.

I'm still in shock.

My wife and I keep talking about it because this kind of thing never happens to us, and, what's more, Regina Mills  _never_  does this kind of thing. I've heard stories of her using small children as target practice, stories that explain exactly how much of a monster the woman really is, but that woman who saved my son  _was not_  a monster.

Regina Mills may never be a hero, but she's not a villain. At least, she's not a villain to me and my family anymore. Since Regina saved Danny, my wife and I have started to take stock of the things the curse provided to us that we wouldn't have had otherwise. The list is exceptionally long, and it completely outweighs the positives of the old world.

The most important thing she gave me and my wife was the chance to be together without the threat of persecution because, in most of the Enchanted Forest, my wife and I would have been shunned or killed for being together, but not here. Here, we're accepted or at least tolerated, and the laws here protect us and our son.

I may never completely be okay with everything that's happened to those of us in town that have been whisked back and forth between the realms on the whim of witches, and there are many crimes for which Regina does, unquestionably, need to be held accountable, but I think I'd welcome the chance to allow her the opportunity to redeem herself now.

She's clearly not the person who cast the first curse, and I'll never forget the fact she saved my son.

The next time I see her walking down the street, instead of walking the other way, I plan to greet her with a friendly nod and say hello. I think, perhaps, it's time we all started seeing her as a person as opposed to putting her into the framework of the stories we heard about her when she was the Evil Queen.

I'm starting to think most of those were likely exaggerations made for show.

Grateful for my family,

Linda Palmer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm an Evil Regal. So sue me! ;-)
> 
> As always, reviews are appreciated.


	10. Cassandra Gerritsen, Head Mistress

Dear Editor,

In the Enchanted Forest, I was tutor to the royal family. I taught Queen Eva and, later, her daughter Snow White. Before either of them, I was the very young tutor of Queen Eva's mother. For three generations, I have taught young Princesses who would eventually become the Queen of our kingdom, and, for three generations, I have striven to impart upon them not only the wisdom of the knowledge one who is literate has by virtue of being so, but also knowledge in what it means to hold one's self up to the proper decorum one of royal blood and nobility should always carry one's self, regardless of situation or circumstance.

In Storybrooke, I run a private school that focuses on teaching young men and women the meaning of propriety. My school's courses focus as much on one's literate knowledge as it does on ensuring our pupils are capable of presenting themselves well irrespective of the class or situation in which they were born.

As many of you are likely well aware, my school holds the annual cotillion for Storybrooke, and I am pleased to say this tradition is one that still holds strong despite the many misadventures our town has experienced over the past few years.

Having presented my credentials, I feel I am forced to break one of my most sacred of rules regarding how one ought to behave. I instruct my students consistently to never spread gossip or ill regard toward anyone. A proper lady or gentlemen should always be able to hold their tongue, and, were this a different circumstance, I believe I would do so without hesitation.

However, we are in trying times, and, though I am loathe to admit it aloud, such times call for drastic measures. As such, I feel I am forced to point out that Mr. Killian Jones is a menace to our town, not because I believe he would cause property damage, steal, or kill another person but because he has propositioned not one but 12 of my young ladies and one of my young men since his arrival back to our town.

When I confronted Mr. Jones regarding this fact, his only response was, and I quote, "What? That was a man? I thought he was just a short haired girl. Maybe I should lay off the rum a bit."

Notwithstanding the fact that he is a drunken pirate who is very clearly attempting to catch the eye of Ms. Swan, most of my students are under the legal age established by this land's laws. Though, if we were back in the Enchanted Forest, it would be perfectly acceptable for a man of Mr. Jones's age to proposition and even marry a young woman in her late teens, it is not acceptable here, and I feel something must be done to better protect our young people.

After contacting the Sheriff's office and leaving a message on the answering machine, I was finally able to speak with Sheriff Nolan in person. I decided this matter required immediate action, so, much to my personal distaste, I stationed myself beside his pickup truck and waited for him to exit his apartment as semi-stalking seems to be the only way to gain the Sheriff Department's attention these days.

Sheriff Nolan's response to my report of Mr. Jones's questionable behavior was, "I'll have a talk with him, but, in the meantime, tell your girls... and your prettier boys ...to try to avoid him. Oh, and, if you don't mind, please don't tell Emma about this. She's already got a lot on her plate, and I don't think now's a good time to worry her with more stuff."

I don't know what was more foul, the fact our Sheriff was not outraged by Mr. Jones's actions or the fact Sheriff Nolan was more concerned for his daughter's feelings than for my students' well-being and safety from an obvious predator.

This is not the Enchanted Forest. We do not marry young girls off to men old enough to be their fathers, and we certainly do not support nor do we condone older men propositioning our teenaged girls. Even when we were in Enchanted Forest, I was appalled at the practice of marrying young girls off to men old enough to be their father for the sake of treaties, land holdings, social climbing, and the like.

The mental and physical damage I have seen done to young women forced into those situations is too great to even begin to go into detail here in this letter. The harm caused by such practices would fill libraries with books.

There is a reason this realm, and this land specifically, abhors this type of behavior, as do I.

I am requesting the good citizens of Storybrooke assist me in keeping the young people of our town safe. If you see Mr. Jones anywhere near a young woman, please step in and be the voice of modern civility and tact. Since our police force seems to think Mr. Jones doesn't need to be separated from the general populace, then it is up to us to see to it his verbal propositions do not turn into something more should he imbibe more than a little too much in the rum of which he's so apparently fond.

Despite his obvious courting of Ms. Swan, he still insists on behaving inappropriately toward women, and I feel the women of this town deserve better treatment than a innuendo filled retort, a wink of a makeup lined eye, and a swarthy smirk laced with false promises and questionable intentions.

If Sheriff Nolan should read this letter, I hope he recognizes the danger he's allowed into our town and the potential disastrous outcomes that might befall us should Mr. Jones not take heed of the talk he's to have with our sheriff. If Ms. Swan should read this letter, I hope she takes note of the situation at hand. I will not and refuse to be sorry for any additional emotional strain this may cause her. She is a mother and a woman. I'm certain she can understand my concerns.

I do understand there is a crisis in the town at the moment which requires the attention of our policing forces. However, I feel it safe to say there is always a crisis with which to attend, and I fail to see that as an excuse to ignore one's civic duty.

It's bad form.

Our community is too isolated for any one of us within the confines of the borders to give in to any type of outrageous impropriety. Something must be done, and I believe it is readily apparent that we the citizens of this town, will have to do it ourselves.

Respectful regards,

Cassandra Gerritsen  
Head Mistress  
Clyde Warren's School for Young Men and Women

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to be clear here. If this was the EF, Killian hitting on a 16 year old girl wouldn't be considered outrageous, and, since he was never part of the original curse, he doesn't have this world's social norms drilled into him, so, to him, it should still be fine for him to hit on a teenaged girl, even if he doesn't have any intention of follow through. Ms. Gerritsen, however, disagrees.
> 
> As always, reviews are appreciated.


	11. Brad Johnson, Bro

Dear Editor,

So, here’s the thing, my buddy Clint and my buddy Dave and I were hanging out at the Rabbit Hole a couple of nights ago, and we started talking about the fact that this town doesn’t have any live music, which sucks, right? I mean, we got all these peeps who can play, and nobody ever does. Like, what up? So we were thinking maybe we should start a band, but Clint was all like, “Dude, we can’t start a band. The only songs we know are from 1987.”

I was all like, “Bro, we could _write_ our own stuff.” But, Dave was all, “Dude, do you even know how to write music?” And I don’t, which sucks, but I know there’s got to be, like, someone out there that writes music, right?

Before the curse broke, we used to chill with Emma Swan at the Rabbit Hole a couple of nights a week, which was boss because she had, like, hundreds of songs on her iPhone, right? It kicked a--. She’d play them, and we’d jam out. Swan-girl totally rocked the house on Tuesday and Thursday nights, but then she broke the curse, and it sort of killed our buzz.

Like, she never goes to the Rabbit Hole anymore, so we can’t jam out to her music. Man, she doesn’t even talk to us anymore. It’s like she’s too good for us or something, which I guess makes sense because she’s, like, a princess and we’re just the guys that used to be part of her ‘rets’ army in the EF.

But, whatever, my point is, we need some live music up in this b---h, right?

Clint plays the drums, Dave’s got bass, and I’m pretty good at guitar, but no one wants to hear any of us sing. Like, whoa, you _do not_ want that, bro. So is there anyone out there that can totally kick a-- as a front man?

We need someone on vocals and someone to write stuff, but, like, none of the crap bard music from the EF. That sh-t sucked a--. Nah, man, we want to do rock or maybe alternative. Swan-girl had this one band, Nine Inch Nails, and they were incredible. Like, it blew our minds. We want to do that kind of music.

Anyone know what we’re talking about? Jerry at the Rabbit Hole says he’ll let us play there on Friday nights if we can get a decent set list, and we’ll share whatever we make with whoever writes for us because we’re not deadbeats, right? We’re not in it for the money, bro. We’re in it for the love the music.

And, if anyone is still chilling with Swan-girl, could you ask her if we could borrow her iPod for a few days so we can learn some of the songs because the internet doesn’t work anymore. I mean, like, we see stuff other people in Storybrooke put online, but we can’t get anything outside of the town. It sucks so hard, dude. I am _jonesing_ for some Netflix or Google or something, right? You know what I’m saying?

Best thing anyone’s done since the curse broke the first time was set up that social networking site for the town. It’s not Twitter of Facebook, but at least it’s something. My bros and I posted about the band on that site, too, but we figured it couldn’t hurt to put something in the paper about it because it sucks that we don’t have more music in this place.

The EF always had something going down on Friday and Saturday nights. The guards used to get wasted on Friday nights and see who could throw a battle axe the farthest. Jerry Ozturk always won those, but it didn’t matter because we were having fun and blowing off steam, and there was always someone singing and someone playing something and it was fun.

We don’t have anything like that here, but we totally should, right? Maybe not with the axe throwing because, you know, someone could hurt someone and go to jail, but we need more stuff to do than just sitting at Granny’s or at the Rabbit Hole and drinking on the weekends.

Dude, I’ve seen the movies playing in town so many times I think I dream about them. Like, for real, I could quote whole scenes from _Star Wars_ word for word, and I don’t even like that movie, bro. There’s nothing okay with finding out you kissed your sister. Not cool.

So, anyway, if you’re down for helping start up some bands, Kenny Austin said we could go practice on his ranch any time. We just had to call ahead so he’d know who was in his barn, which is awesome because that means no one is ticking people off by practicing in their garage. Kenny said he’s totally okay with setting up a schedule so everyone’s got a shot at practicing when they want.

Kenny’s the best, man. We got to do something for him, like bring him beer or something. If you are going to ask him for some time for your band, be cool about it, okay? Because he’s being a bro, and it’s not cool to f—k with your bros, right?

If you want to be our front man or our writer or whatever, hit us up online. We started the ‘We Need Music!’ thread on the website, and you can message us there.

In it to win it,

Brad Johnson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What? They can't all be ground breaking commentary on the town. ;-)
> 
> As always, reviews are appreciated.


	12. Ann Hawthorne, Frustrated Admin Assistant

Dear Editor,

I’m a simple girl who has a simple life. Give me coffee, a decent book, and at least two 15 minute breaks and an hour for lunch on the weekdays, and I’d like to think I’m good to go, but maybe I’m wrong because I’m starting to think all of you think my life is far more important than it actually is.

Since I first wrote in, I’ve been inundated with requests for my petition, and I would like to say that, at the time I wrote that letter, I was frustrated. People, I was being facetious. There is no petition. There never was a petition, and, while I’m on the subject of what is actually happening as opposed to what is hyperbole, if you call into the Mayor’s Office to request I set up an appointment for you to see Mayor Mills but absolutely refuse to tell me what the nature of the meeting will be, I’m not going to try to squeeze you in because there’s no way for me to know you’re having an emergency situation. Don’t go off halfcocked and start telling people that I’m refusing to let you see the Mayor because that is NOT what is happening.

I don’t know what’s going on if you don’t tell me, and I ask you why you’d like to speak with her for a reason. Got it? I will, of course, make an appointment for you, and it will be the next truly available appointment date unless you tell me the nature of your call so I can see that it is actually an emergency as opposed to you saying it’s an emergency and me finding out through the Mayor’s wrath that you were angry about your neighbor’s dog pooping on your lawn. I’m not trying to prevent you from having an audience with your mayor, okay? Let’s get that cleared away right now. No one is trying to prevent you from speaking with Mayor Mills.

The fact that everyone suddenly decided they wanted to air their grievances to City Hall all at the same time is not my fault, and I’m doing the best I can to manage it while continuing on with my normal duties and responsibilities, which, by the way, are many. So, if you call and get my answering machine, please leave a message. I will get back to you. I’m not avoiding you.

Let me repeat that.

 _I am not avoiding you_.

Unlike some of the other city workers in this town, you don’t have to camp out next to my car until I leave for work in order to get me to do something. I have a 24 hour turnaround, per the website and the message on my answering machine. Please stop randomly popping up next to my car in the morning. It’s creepy. I almost pepper sprayed one of you yesterday morning. You know who you are. I’m not sorry. You shouldn’t have been laying on the ground waiting for me to leave my apartment.

You cannot bribe me in order to get ahead of the line of people who wish to speak with the Mayor. I, unlike some others in town, do have a modicum of integrity left. Please stop trying to bribe me, and I assure you there is nothing you can offer the Mayor that would win her interest. She has everything. Really.

I do not enjoy being reprimanded by Mayor Mills. It falls somewhere between root canal and having my fingernails ripped out one-by-one on the scale of how unenjoyable the experience is, so I can assure I take doing my job _extremely_ seriously. It’s the only way to ensure I avoid being on the Mayor’s radar.

Thanks to all of you who have decided that I need to be the Mockingjay for your campaign to right the wrongs of this town, I’m not only on her radar, I’m a daily stop in her routine.

I hate you all.

We have processes and procedures in place for our city workers, and they are there for a reason. If you feel a civil servant isn’t doing their job, then, by all means, please feel free to call in, write in, or come in to City Hall to air your grievances. Do not, however, pin me in a booth at Granny’s and rant at me for over an hour about how the Sheriff’s Office refuses to arrest Hook for hitting on young women. Yes, it’s disgusting. Yes, he’s a pig. Yes, he shouldn’t be doing it. But – and here’s the important part of this – there’s nothing to be done until or unless he actually touches one of the girls (or that one boy). Up until that point, he’s just going to be that crazy, leather wearing, drunken pirate with a hook for a hand, okay?

I can’t do anything. I can’t influence the Mayor to do anything, and the Mayor can only encourage the Sheriff to talk to Hook, which has happened, by the way. David Nolan apparently had that talk with Hook the day before yesterday, so you can stop with cornering me to tell me I need to let the Mayor know.

She knows, **_alright_**?

Look, I think it’s safe to say that everyone reads this paper every day, and I know that I’ve seen some really great ideas going on to help make the town a better place. Mario Rodriquez should be commended for the support group he’s starting up. Someone should back Tom Billings because I, for one, would love a coffee shop, and Brad Johnson and his bros are onto something regarding live music in town.

Billy Jack is right. We have to make do. I swear to whatever deity of choice you’d like that I am doing everything I can, but I can only do so much. I’m not the deputy mayor, the mayor, part of the city council or anything. I’m _just_ Regina Mills’ administrative assistant. That’s it. I hold no power. Basically, I’m a glorified secretary who is shamed deeply by the fact that her boss’s fashion sense is about 1,000 times better than her own.

If you want to improve the town, make is safer, get the economy running, or whatever, then _we_ have to do it as a community. We can’t just go to Mayor Mills’ office, lodge a complaint, and assume it’ll get fixed. When is she going to have time to address everything? Between dodging the Wicked Witch and trying to protect the town from flying monkeys? Yeah, I don’t think so.

I’ll admit I have _a lot_ to be frustrated about regarding my job, and Ms. Walrack, the Comptroller, is on the verge of losing her ever loving mind due to the budget situation, but we’re trying to do our part. I swear to you we are.

Are you trying to do yours?

Making it day-to-day,

Ann Hawthorne

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup, Ann will be a recurring letter writer. I like her a lot.
> 
> As always, reviews are appreciated.


	13. Shell Ludeman, 5th Grade Teacher

Dear Editor,

My name is Shell Ludeman, and many of you may know me. I teach 5th grade at the elementary school, and I’m also the lead teacher for the 5th grade department. Each grade level from Kindergarten through the 12th grade has a lead teacher, and we’ve met with each other every week since we arrived in Storybrooke.

The meetings serve multiple purposes. We make sure the curriculum stays on track so our students are learning the right thing to help them advance well into the next grade, we keep each other in the loop on students that may require special attention, and we serve as a sort of board of directors for the teachers of this town since we don’t have a teachers’ union to speak of.

Every month during the school board meeting, all 13 of us attend, and we bring up points we feel should be addressed at the next school board meeting. This process has worked out very well during the time in which nothing actually happened or changed in our town.

However, we’ve run into a bit of a snag in our curriculum, which we brought to the attention of both the administrators of our district and the school board to no avail. Now that we all know who and what we actually are, we realize that it may be a good idea to start teaching a unit during each year of elementary school, and a class every couple of years for 6-12th grade regarding the history, economics, religion, etc. of the Enchanted Forest.

Our thought on the subject is we can’t move forward without knowing from where we come, and, should we once again be thrust back into the Enchanted Forest, our children would be at a severe disadvantage if they were completely unfamiliar with how the old world politics and infrastructure works. The teachers feel we should give our children every advantage to succeed in either realm.

The school board has declined to discuss it, stating that any major change in the curriculum such as this should be put up for a bond election, which we think is completely ridiculous. We feel the school board doesn’t want to tackle the logistics of finding someone to write the history books, finding the money to print them, and finding a way to insert the material into already very cramped school requirements. If they leave it up to a vote in a bond hearing, they may never have to tackle any of it because, as we all know, there’s never an election cycle in Storybrooke.

The very idea is laughable.

The administration refuses to take a side one way or another, stating that the central focus for our schools is to make certain the children are educated for where they are currently living, and we should let the school board and voters decide if what we’re teaching isn’t up to standard, which, again, the teachers think is a tactic to avoid the topic.

Whether we want to admit it or not, we _are_ from what is essentially “Fairytale Land,” as the elementary aged students are so fond of calling the Enchanted Forest. In the other realm, some of us aren’t even human. For example, in the old world, I’m a talking mouse.

What’s more, our children are actually growing up now, and we can’t ignore the fact that they don’t understand what’s happened to them the way the adults do. Even if the borders of the town should suddenly reopen, we’ll never be fully part of this realm. There will always be stark differences, and, as educators, we teachers feel a certain obligation to ensure or students are well educated on the world from which they came so they can know and understand who they are.

Since the school board won’t do anything and the administration is trying to sidestep it, we decided to send this letter into the editor in the hopes the parents reading this will see our point and support us. If enough of you are willing to go to the next school board meeting and voice your support for teaching our children about the Enchanted Forest, they’ll have to address it and come to a finalized decision. School board meetings are always held the first Monday of the month in the administration’s building located close to City Hall.

I realize this letter isn’t cute, funny, or in the least bit entertaining, as many letters to the editor tend to be, but I do feel this is an extremely important topic. It really shouldn’t be ignored.

The teachers of your town haven’t ever asked for much. We’ve actively acknowledged not unionizing, we often spend our own money to buy supplies for our classrooms, we haven’t made a fuss over the fact we have never gotten a raise, we voluntarily rotate out elementary teachers to cover for the fact Mary Margaret Blanchard has suddenly decided to no longer teach, and we set aside any anger we may have at being responsible for watching your children whenever the town goes into crisis mode midday and catastrophe strikes.

We’ve constantly and consistently protected and educated your children for decades now, and all we’re asking is for your support so we may continue to provide your children with a proper education.

Regards,

Shell Ludeman  
5th Grade Teacher

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Won't somebody think of the children?!
> 
> As always, reviews are appreciated.


	14. Shawn O'Bannon, Father

Dear Editor,

I'll be the first to admit that I really don't know a lot about how this magic stuff works. It's not as though I've had cause to learn much about it. My family was a family of cobblers, seamstresses, and tailors. There's not any magic involved in any of those professions unless you're a fairy who fixes shoes or makes clothes.

But, like I said, I'm not. I'm just your average Joe. Ordinarily, I don't even think about magic unless I get a random thought about how I wound up the town tailor, and, when I do think about, it just gives me a headache, so I try not to think about it at all. Best to leaves these kinds of thoughts up to the professionals.

Then, the other day, my little girl, Helen, was on her play date with her little group of friends when one of them started to fall off the monkey bars, and Helen let out this little yelp, held her hands up, and her friend levitated.

Well, everyone froze and started looking around thinking Regina Mills, Emma Swan, or maybe the Blue Fairy was around somewhere, but none of them were there. That's when we realized that my little girl was the one doing the levitating.

It's amazing how quickly a parent can go from completely panicked to calming voice despite the full on, crazed, mind blindingly huge amount of fear they may be experiencing internally. Apparently, my little girl has magic, and neither me nor my wife can figure out how that works because no one on either side of our families has magic.

What's worse, we don't know what to do about it. There's no book out on how to deal with your 11 year old who has magic. We don't have any training schools for this sort of thing. We've got nothing, which brings me to the point of this letter.

I'm willing to bet I'm not the only non-magical parent with a magical child in this town, and, since Hogwarts doesn't exists (as far as we can tell), then we need to do something because an 11 year old with untrained magic that only comes out whenever they're experiencing extreme emotions is a dangerous thing.

Need I remind you, friends, the volatile emotions of preteens and teenagers? Things are bound to get ugly quickly, and I really don't want our town to turn into that Twilight Zone episode where everyone is afraid to think unhappy thoughts lest one kid turn them into a dog or something. Or was that a Simpson's episode? Can't remember, but I think you get my drift.

Just in case you don't, I don't want be afraid of my child unless it has to do with who she might be bringing home to date or whenever she starts driving, so we need to start a training school for the small percentage of children who have magic and no one around to help them control it.

I'm not even sure who we should talk to about this. All the usual suspects are tied up. Mr. Gold is currently being controlled by the Wicked Witch. Regina Mills is currently training Emma Swan, and, obviously, Emma Swan can't teach anything to anyone while she's learning it herself. Blue is, well, frankly, I'd just rather her not be in charge of our younger magic users, and that's all I'm going to say about that. I understand Tinkerbell is in town, and I know she has experience dealing with teenagers. Maybe she could teach a night class?

Whatever it is we decide to do, we should probably start doing it soon. Last night, my daughter got mad at me because I told her she couldn't listen to anymore Justin Bieber before bedtime, and our CD player exploded into a ball of flame.

Do you know how much a CD players costs in this town now? You ever wonder if you're honestly about to take your life in your own hands because you then had to ground your child for setting said CD player on fire via telekinesis, like maybe you'll be next? At the rate we're going, I'm not going to have a single creature comfort to my name before my baby girl gets herself in check, or I'm going to wind up extra crispy.

My wife and I need some help. Anyone have any suggestions?

Refusing to be scared of my daughter,

Shawn O'Bannon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...or, hell, maybe Hogwarts DOES exists, but the owls can't get to Storybrooke because of the protection spell Belle put in place? Who knows?
> 
> As always, reviews are appreciated.


	15. Ray Hansen, Phone Guy

Dear Editor,

I think we need to discuss our phone system situation in this town, and, by ‘situation,’ I mean ‘impending melt down larger than Chernobyl.’

I work for local phone company. Excuse me, make that the _only_ phone company, and we have a serious situation on our hands. When we upgraded our phone system back before the first curse broke, we went off the assumption we’d be able to upgrade and maintain the system as the need came up, which is why we only installed a few cell towers.

Not a lot of people had cell phones, and our network coverage was backed up by the cell towers Sprint has up in the area, so, if our towers weren’t cutting it, we could piggyback off of Sprint. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it worked, and we figured we’d add a few more towers in a couple of years and gradually pull off of Sprint’s towers.

Well, now that the town’s cut off from everything, we can’t piggyback off those towers, and, now that time isn’t stuck in a rut, everyone wants a cell phone, which means our network is straining more than a weightlifter at a Strong Man contest.

It’s bad, people. It’s you-wanted-it-and-didn’t-put-a-ring-on-it bad.

I don’t even know what Sprint thinks of the fact Storybrooke just up and vanished, and I wonder about that a lot. When the curse broke, did our town get wiped out of existence on every vendor book and fellow town roster we dealt with, or does the outside world talk about the town in Southern Maine that just vanished without a trace? Are we on one of those God-awful ‘Unsolved Mystery’ episodes as “the town that never was,” or something? You know how the people in this world are. They love an unsolved mystery.

But that’s all really beside my point, which is that our current cell network is about to be unable to handle the load of cell phone traffic it’s getting now, and we don’t know how to fix it because what we need are more towers, which aren’t things we can make.

We had the towers we have right now shipped in, and do I really need to point out why that’s not an option anymore?

I know it sounds like a little thing, but communication is really important to keeping everyone up-to-date on what happens around here. Our cell phone sales went up immediately after Tiny took out a quarter of the town. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I’m 99.9% sure everyone wanted a cell so we could warn each other of whatever horrendous thing of the day was out to try to kill us on their way to trying to kill one of the royalty because that little episode forced all of us to recognize the royalty wasn’t going to alert us of impending doom, so we’d have to it ourselves.

It’s a good plan. Text messaging works a lot better than carrier pigeon or a young boy running from place to place while yelling out the bad news, but it only works if the network stays up. In case you’ve missed it, the network is going down a lot lately.

I would go so far as to say that having a working cell network is an absolute necessity in this town considering how often we’re hit with some type of major force of destruction, so we need to find a way to fix this situation we’re in, but, frankly, the phone company is at a loss.

If Gold were available, I think we’d probably ask him to conjure some towers up or maybe figure out a way to at least get our cell signals to bounce off of the towers outside our borders, but that’s obviously not going to happen, and I don’t think anyone else in town has enough juice to do it, not that I really understand how that magic stuff works, but I figure the Dark One is a lot more powerful than the Evil Queen.

Whatever we do, we’re going to have to do it soon because, if we don’t, we’re going to wind up using smoke signals and drums to pass along emergency notifications because our network is going to break down completely.

I don’t have anything against the drums. I enjoy a good drum line just like anyone else, and I also enjoy a good smoke circle, but that’s probably for a different letter. Although, I _am_ pretty peeved we can’t get anything to, well, smoke right now because this freaky cold weather killed off a bunker crop, but, back to my point, we at the phone company are clueless as to how to fix this issue.

We’re reaching out to everyone via this letter in the hopes that someone might have an idea on how to fix this cell situation. At this point, we’re open to just about anything short of sacrificing our children or doing the Chicken Dance, though I suspect Hank Chillings is getting desperate enough to maybe sacrifice his first born. He refuses to do ever do the Chicken Dance.

Can you hear me now,

Ray Hansen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, I feel Ray brings up a good point. Who in the town is picking up the slack now that pot can't be brought in from upstate? 
> 
> As always, reviews are appreciated.


	16. Father Mallory, Giving Faith

Dear Editor,

Faith is a driving force for many in both this world and the old. It can bring people together. It can give hope where there was none. It can provide comfort. It can even create metaphorical bridges that never were or had been burned so long ago none remember there ever having been a connection.

Faith gives us strength. Faith gives us conviction. Faith gives us direction.

Faith in our fellow man, faith in our leadership, faith in ourselves, faith in love, faith in hope, or faith in the Almighty  _all_  give us internal power and strength. It binds us. It ties us together. It gives us a unity that  _nothing_ and  _no one_  can tear asunder.

Faith is our guiding light.

I'm sadden to see so many turning away from faith in times such as these. Now is not the time to walk away from placing your trust in each other and in the Spirit. Now is the time to draw upon your faith to help guide you through these troubling times.

The Church is here to help all who would like help in finding their faith. It isn't here only for those seeking forgiveness on Sunday for the sins of Saturday night. We are here for  _all_  who need support, and it pains me to hear of anyone, whether clergy or laity, turning a blind eye to someone in our town asking for help and guidance.

It has always been my practice to offer help to any who ask, regardless of their personal beliefs or their past. We are not here to judge. That is for a different power to do at a different time. It is not for anyone in this town, or any other, to make those choices.

None among us are God. None among us hold the right nor the power to decide who is and is not deserving of placing our faith in. Everyone is deserving, and, when someone falls, we, as a community, should be there to pick them up.

That has always been our way, even in the Enchanted Forest. We have always supported each other, and my ministry will not turn away from that practice now. So long as I am Priest, the Church and those who practice the Faith of the Church will follow this conviction because that is what is  _right_.

It is with this in mind that I have opened the church to Mario Rodriquez and his support group, Faith in Storybrooke. What Mario is doing is to be commended and supported because what he is doing is helping bring faith, and by extension, hope and healing to our town. I cannot imagine a better, more wondrous act of courage and strength of character than to give of yourself to help your fellow man, and I am pledging that my ministry will support him in any way we can.

I'm certain many of you have heard of the disagreements this has caused in some areas of the Church. Those rumors are true. There are those among the clergy who believe placing our faith in those who clearly are on a path of self-destruction from which there is no clear hope of escaping is wrong. They argue it is a waste of resources and time.

I will tell you now what I told those who voiced such abominable things then; I don't care.

We reach for those at the bottom and pull them up. We don't walk over them on our way to those we think have a better chance at improving their station in life. We put our faith in God to support us as we support each other, and we put our faith in our community to choose the path of light over the path of darkness.

Too easy is it to become jaded and cynical. We must not let that negativity seep into our hearts. What would become of us if all followed the example of the few who have decided they hold the right to judge?

We are better than that. We are stronger than that. We are more faithful to ourselves than to allow the darkness to overtake us or to  _not_  help those who struggle with the darkness each day of their lives.

The Church's doors are open to all who seek shelter, whether you believe in the God of my faith or not. It doesn't matter. He, and I, believe in you, and all of us here will welcome you with open arms and loving hearts.

Those who refuse to support our entire community are no longer welcome in the Church.

The Church is a place of safety, of community, and of support. It is not a safe harbor as a front for those who would stand behind it and make decisions on the path of others. In this town, that will no longer be tolerated.

I pray for those who feel they have such rights. I pray they see the error of their ways, and I pray they return with a better sense of what it means to be a servant of the Lord.

May the Lord bless you and keep you,

Father John Mallory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not particularly religious, but I just figured the local preacher-man wouldn't be down for someone *coughBluecough* telling the people in his ministry to NOT help people. Call me crazy.
> 
> As always, reviews are appreciated, and, after my manifesto yesterday, it'd be nice to hear what all you think about this strange little fic.


	17. Lauren Ketchikan, Equal Rights Activist

Dear Editor,

Okay, I don't mean to sound rude or anything, but I really need for people to quit telling me that one day my prince will come. I mean it. Stop.

Yeah, it's cool that we're all from a land that believes in happy endings and white knights coming in to save the day, but that doesn't mean I have to be okay with the men around here always wanting to sweep in to be  _my_ knight because, honestly, I can be my own knight.

Look, I'm flattered you think I'm attractive, and it's great you want to be helpful, but I really can take care of myself, as can most all the other women in this town. We're not all trapped in towers, okay? We don't all need ALL THE SAVING or ALL THE WOOING.

Also, has it even crossed your minds, guys, that maybe we aren't even into you like that? Like maybe we're into  _each other_  like that? Oh yeah, I'm saying it. Some of us are lesbians. Some of us are bisexual. Some of us are transgendered. Some of us identify as queer. We cover the whole spectrum of LGBTQ, as do the men in this town.

I'm only bringing this up because we've all been living together here for three decades, which means everyone not only knows everyone else's business, but who they did their business with and when. (Yeah, Mayor Mills, we all knew about you and Graham. Who did you think you were kidding?) That means that there's no excuse to  _not_  know who prefers to date what gender around here. So, I'm getting a little tired of guys acting like 1) it's a surprise I'm a lesbian, and 2) I kicked them in them in the balls when I tell them, politely, that I'm not interested because *gasp* I have a girlfriend.

It's like I said something akin to, "Your penis is the size of my pinky, and your heart is in the Evil Queen's collection." Many get seriously mad, and some of them get irrationally irate.

Last Saturday night, my girl and I were hanging out with some friends at the Rabbit Hole when one of the local yokels who has hit on me a half dozen times if he's done it once started doing it again. When I, again, reminded him that I'm just not into him like that, he went off on me, and it was hardcore.

Here are some highlights of his rant to end all rants:

\- I shouldn't be in a bar for straight people if I'm not one of them (Because, you know, there's a lesbian bar around here somewhere, right?)  
\- I should dress like a lesbian so men can be warned about me (Because how I dress is clearly a call sign to explaining my sexual preferences)  
\- It's ridiculous that I try to act like a man and do what men are supposed to be doing (Apparently, drinking beer, playing darts, and holding the door for my girlfriend are men's activities; who knew?)  
\- My problem is that I haven't been with a guy, and, had I, then I wouldn't still be pretending to not like them (Unquestionably, he was more than happy to show me what it means to be with the right guy. Excuse me while I go vomit.)  
\- I and the other people like me are going to be the reason for the destruction of this town because we refuse to be normal, have children, and keep the population going in Storybrooke. (See the rest of this letter for what I think about that.)

There was more, but I don't feel like filling up this letter with a bunch of homophobic, misogynic bullsh-t.

I saw Linda Palmer's letter from a couple of weeks ago, and I have to say I agree with her. This land and its laws are a blessing to people in the LGBTQ community because, here, we have protection, but then I have to deal with this kind of crap, and I'm reminded that, even in a town as isolated as ours with as many truly terrifying issues at hand as we have, we still have this level of stupidity.

Can we just take a moment to talk about this?

What is going on with people that their major concern is who I, or anyone, choose to share my life with? What kind of message is that sending? If the town, as a whole, is teaching our children and reinforcing the thought with adults that somewhere in this little bio dome there is a person that is absolutely perfect for you …so long as that person is the opposite gender, then that's not really teaching the concept of true love, now is it?

Is it even really teaching the concept of love at all? Is love really love if you're predestined to be with someone? Or, if you choose to be with someone because you feel a connection with them, and it's not a person that you were supposedly preordained to be with, then wouldn't it stand to reason that your love is stronger than those who go with the flow and don't fight for it?

All I'm saying is that getting mad at me for not wanting the D just because you can't get lucky in this town isn't my fault or anyone's fault who doesn't identify you as a person they're attacked to. The very idea that the less than 1% of us who are part the LGBTQ community in this town would cause a massive population dip because we're not breeding is ridiculous.

Some of have kids! Some of the heterosexual couples around here have chosen not to have kids. What about them? Should they be forced to have children to satisfy the need for population control?

I'm not going to say that we shouldn't be worried about the decrease in our surplus population because we probably should. If we're not getting in anybody new to the town, eventually we're all going to be related to each other, and the royalty won't be the only ones around here with a family tree that don't fork.

However, we have to take things one step at a time, and being a homophobic a—hat isn't helping anything at all.

So, to those of you living in Storybrooke who think that, if you just chase us long enough, we'll eventually give in and be with you after we've told you over and over it's not going to happen, I'm giving you this warning.

We're tired of being stalked. It's not romantic. It's creepy. It's not proof of your love. It's proof you consider us property that you are trying to own. It's not a show of your commitment to us. It's a reinforcement of how little you regard our rights and personal space.

I've been talking to people I know, men, women, and others, who are in the same boat I am, and we're finally done acting like we're fine brushing this stuff off. We may be cut off from the outside world, but that doesn't mean we can't take a page from their book.

I'm starting the equivalent of PFLAG and GLAD. I'm getting us organized, and then we're going after you who keep going after us. We're filing restraining orders. We're setting up neighborhood watches. We're creating weekly support group meetings. We're going to put up notifications with pictures of those of you what have threatened or been violent with those of us in the community. We're going to warn people. We're going to stand together.

We're fighting back.

Consider this your final notice to stop being pieces of sh-t to us because, the next time you act like we owe you something and then threaten us with bodily harm if we don't pony up, expect a restraining order. If you do it again, expect to go to jail.

Everyone is talking about how the community has to support each other, and they're right. I'm taking a stand, and I'm going to support both the larger community and my smaller one within it. We're all in this together whether we like it or not.

Let's see what we can do about acting a little less like sh-theads to each other, okay?

Fighting the good fight,

Lauren Ketchikan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have some serious issues with how the LGBTQ community is represented in OUaT. I'll spare you the rant, but know it's there, rolling around in my head.
> 
> As always, reviews are appreciated. It's nice to see that people are actually reading this so I know it's worth it to keep going.


	18. Magdalene Harper, Loyalist

Dear Editor,

Once, when we were still in the Enchanted Forest and before the first curse was cast, I had the good fortune to meet Snow White in person. It was back in her fugitive days, and our paths happened to cross when we were both trying to ford a stream.

At first, I hadn't a clue who she was. To me, she was just a nice young lady who happened to be where I was and was willing to help an old lady continue on her way. She was so polite and so kind. By the time we were both across the stream, it was getting near nightfall, and she absolutely insisted on staying with me until I made it to my village some hours still away.

She stayed with me, walking along the main road because I couldn't take the shortcuts through the forest, and, once we made it to my town, she made certain I was safely in my home before she went on her way. It wasn't until she was gone and the next day had come to greet me that I saw a wanted poster and realized who she was.

I was struck by her compassion and her willingness to put herself in danger simply to help an old woman make it home safely. I felt it spoke of her true character, and it made me heartsick at the knowledge she had been robbed of her birthright because it was clear to me, based on the time I spent with her, that she would make an excellent queen. Certainly, she would be more compassionate and fairer in ruling the kingdom than the horrid woman currently occupying the throne.

I never had the chance to thank Snow for her kindness that day, and it has always bothered me that I didn't because it's rare to find anyone, monarch or peasant, who won't turn a blind eye to someone like me, who is old and crippled and not much to look at anymore.

Yesterday, I was trying to cross the road, and I was having a time of it. It wasn't an issue of traffic. It was an issue of my body refusing to move even though I was telling it to go. As I tried to step off the curb, a hand rapped around my elbow and helped to steady me. I turned to thank the stranger and found I was looking at Snow White, who, once again, was willing to help an old woman make it home even though the strain of doing so might keep someone else from stopping to help.

Of course, she's not in danger from guards anymore, but, as heavily with child as she is, any extra walking is tiresome, and the threat form the Wicked Witch is great. She should have been hurrying home or to wherever her Prince Charming is so she and the baby would be well protected, but she was not.

While others passed me by without a second look, Snow stopped to help me.

It made my day, to have someone look me in the eye and give me a genuine smile. To have someone recognize me and not shy away is as rare a thing here as it was in the Enchanted Forest, and I'm grateful that people like Snow exist to set an example for everyone else.

Many of you have said you wouldn't want Snow White nor her husband to be in charge of the government here nor to be your monarchs again, and it makes me angry. How can you reject someone with the heart and the kindness of Snow for someone like Regina, who is so self-absorbed and unjust in her actions? I don't understand the reasoning for thinking Snow and James were poor monarchs. They were not.

Our kingdom thrived under their care, and, take it from an old woman who has seen much, given what they had to work with when they took over, they made great strides for their people during the time before that witch sent us here.

A leader, whether a monarch or an elected official, who is willing to be among their people and willing to honestly care for each of them with genuine concern and love will always be a better leader than those who sit far removed from their people and make their decisions based on a chess match of politics.

I see the letters here in the paper. I read them and shake my head at all the people accusing the royalty of forgetting the others in town exist. This isn't true. I would never believe it to be true of Snow White, a woman who still sees everyone she passes by and doesn't look through or around those of us the rest of society normally does.

Perhaps the Evil Queen chooses to ignore the people in this town, but not the Charmings. They've done nothing but fight to protect us and do what's best for us. If there are some of you that can't see that, then maybe you need consider what life would have been like had the Evil Queen succeeded in killing Snow White back in the old world.

Snow White is our rightful ruler and our protector. We should be supporting her, not criticizing her for things beyond her control. She did not send us here. She did not put us into a place without time. She did not deny us the ability to know ourselves or find our happy endings. She fought to the very end to prevent all of that from happening, and she scarified her first born so that her people might have a chance to one day be free of the Evil Queen.

I think time away from the Enchanted Forest and time spent in this land of false democratic promises and skewed tales of our lives has made many of you forget who our enemies are and who our champions are.

If you're not sure anymore, try to remind yourself how we found ourselves here in the first place.

With loyalty to the White Kingdom,

Magdalene Harper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's really hard for me to write positive stuff about the Charmings. I'm just throwing that out there.


	19. Jennifer Grice, Survivor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ****NOTE: THERE ARE POSSIBLE TRIGGERS IN THIS PARTICULAR LETTER. TRIGGER WARNING. I REPEAT, TRIGGER WARNING! ****

Dear Editor,

I was 16 when I had my first encounter with the truly evil. It was when we were all still in the Enchanted Forest, before the first curse took us away. My parents were working the fields, and they had left me in our cottage to tend to the chores there. Our home sat just along a road that was well traveled, and it wasn’t uncommon for a traveler to stop at our door to ask for water or permission to rest in our small barn before they continued on their way.

As a young girl, I had grown accustomed to strangers in our home. Papa always said good deeds are rewarded with good deeds, and he taught me to never turn away anyone who asked for help. Even though Mama was against it, Papa welcomed villagers, farmers, traveling people, soldiers, and holy men equally. He didn’t discriminate because someone worked as a soldier for the Evil Queen. He said people had to work to find a way to provide for their families, and he wouldn’t hold it against a man who was doing the best he could given his circumstances in life. Papa never turned away a man in rags who came begging for food. He said a man had to be desperate to beg, and, if that beggar stole something from us, then Papa said the beggar must have needed it more than we did so he should have it.

My papa was a good man with a kind heart, and I grew up believing most everyone was as good in spirit as he was, until I was 16, and then I quickly learned how wrong I was.

The Queen’s solider came to our door. I’d seen his kind before. Based on the markings of his armor, he was a scout sent ahead of the party for someone in the Queen’s Court. The scouts were there to make certain the roads were relatively clear prior to the rest of the party arriving. Ordinarily, the Queen’s scouts were only about twenty minutes ahead of the main party because the Queen had enchanted a piece of their armor to allow for communication back to the main party.  

The solider asked for water, and, as I had yet to draw a bucket from the well that day, I told him I’d be happy to give him a drink if he’d follow me to the well by our cottage. He quickly agreed, and we walked the short distance there, talking amicably about the nice weather and the fact our crop was looking well. It wasn’t until I leaned down to pull the bucket up that I knew something was very wrong.

He grabbed me from behind. I dropped the bucket, struggling to break free of his grasp, but he was much too strong for me. The more I struggled, the more he seemed to like it and the more it excited him. I panicked as he began to tear my skirt away. My parents were too far away to hear my cries, and there was no one around to help me.

I fought with all I had, yelling and screaming for help. He easily turned me in his grasp to face him, holding my arms over my head with one hand while he used his other hand to continue his assault on me.

I cried. I begged. I screamed. I kicked. I pulled at my arms, but I couldn’t escape him. I could feel his hand start to work its way down my body, and I knew that I was about to be violated in ways I’d never recover from. The more I sobbed, the happier it seemed to make him.

Finally, I closed my eyes and prayed to anyone or anything that could hear me to at least make it quick because I knew it was going to painful.

Just as he was about to do the unthinkable, his entire body went slack and hit the ground with a dull thud. Slowly, I opened my eyes and looked around, certain my mind had created some sort of hallucination to help me deal with the violation that was happening to me, but then I saw what had actually happened.

The Evil Queen stood directly in front of me, blocking me from the prying eyes of the men behind her. She locked gaze on me, and her face was stone, but her eyes were on fire with her anger. I could see purple clouds swirling around her irises. It was the eeriest sight I’d ever seen in my life up to that point, but I wasn’t afraid. How could I have been? She had pulled the heart of her scout out of his chest and crushed it before he could do anything else to me.

Where other people in her court would likely have passed by without so much as considering stopping to help me as the solider violated me on the side of the road or where his fellow soldiers might have stood to the side and cheered him on, the Evil Queen had seen what was happening and had stopped it with a finality that I don’t think anyone else would have done.

In the Enchanted Forest, most women were thought of as possessions. Men weren’t normally punished at all for violating us, and, if they were, it was with a slap to the wrist. In most cases, we were punished for allowing ourselves to be so violated. The Queen, however, was seething with rage over what was happening to me. It was clear she was nowhere near approving, accepting, or tolerant of the situation.

She asked me if I was well, and I nodded, looking down at my destroyed skirt and blushing furiously at being so exposed to her. With a wave of her hand, she repaired my clothing, turned, and, in a puff of purple smoke, she was gone back to her horse. She yelled a few orders to another soldier to take up point as the new scout, instructed a few other guards to pick up the body and dispose of it as far away from me as possible, and then they were off again without another word.

I’ll never forget that she saved me from something so horrible. Queen Regina may have done unspeakable things in the name of revenge against Snow White, but her swift justice in saving my innocence is not something I will ever take lightly.

I am telling you this tale, not because I want your pity or sympathy, but because I want you to see there were two sides to Queen Regina even back then, at a point that was, arguably, her most evil. Now that we’re here in Storybrooke and people are free to speak their mind without threat of real retaliation, everyone has no problem airing their thoughts regarding Regina Mills. Most people call her the vilest of things because they were cursed to this place, which, as others before me have stated, is actually far better than from where we came. They seem to set aside the negatives inherit in living in the Enchanted Forest in order to justify their hate of Regina for the injustices she provided while deifying Snow White while seeming to happily overlook all of the injustices Snow and James were happy to allow or continued to enforce during their reign.

I’m not suggesting Regina was the best of rulers, nor am I saying Snow and her prince were the worst. What I am saying is that we need to consider both parties have done some good and some bad; nothing about either is very black and white. What’s more, I can’t justifiably put my faith and loyalty solely with Regina any more than I can with the Charmings because, frankly, it’s unwise and unfair.

For an entire group of people to put all their faith on the actions of one or two people puts a great deal of pressure on those few, and I think that leads to those feeling that pressure to act a certain way. Sometimes, that can cause more harm than good.

Like Father Mallory has been teaching us for years, I choose to put my faith in the important things. I choose to put my faith in Regina that she will do the right thing, as she did when I was being attacked. She stopped it, and I’m not sorry she killed him. He would have done that someone else and likely had already. She stopped a predator. I choose to put my faith in the Charmings that they will remember what it was like to be on the run while being innocent and will recall the peasantry they vowed to protect. I put faith in the situation that they can all work together and with the rest of our community to make things better.

I choose to put my faith into the whole as opposed to the singular, and I choose loyalty to all of us as opposed to loyalty to one. I believe unity is important.

If the Evil Queen can save a girl from torment, and, if Snow White can grievously injure a guard during battle, then I say there is clear evidence that good and bad resides in us all, and I choose to put faith and support into the good I see in those around me while fighting the bad the world provides.

It’s the best I know how to do, and I can’t imagine how any one of us could do any worse by following that motto instead of calling for us to take sides, Regina or Snow White, or demanding others fix the situation in which we find ourselves.

As a 16 year old who had experienced what I did, I could have chosen to continue living in fear and seeing the worst, or I could choose to try to learn to live what had happened and not live in fear. I chose the latter, and, in doing so, I learned to see the good. I try each day to bring that out in others and to keep it within myself. Isn’t that what we all should be doing?

Finding the middle ground,

Jennifer Grice


	20. Stacy Canton, Relatively New Mother

Dear Editor,

Is anyone going to talk about the fact some of us were pregnant for 28 years? I mean, I realize there's not a lot that can be done about that now, but, because we didn't age, neither did our fetuses, so no one ever gave birth in this town until Emma Swan swooped in, and then – BOOM! – baby rush.

If I had no other reason to hate Regina Mills, I would hate her because she forced me to carry around an almost-to-term child for nearly three decades, and, because of the curse blocking us from realizing it was strange no one ever came to term, it never occurred to any of us that we soon-to-be mothers were in some physical danger.

If you don't understand what I mean, then let me point you to this little fact. A fetus is a little parasite, and I don't mean that in a negative way. I knew what I was getting into when my husband and I started trying to have a child back in the Enchanted Forest. I knew a woman's body suffered so the child would grow healthy and strong. I had seen other women with child. I had an idea.

Having been shoved into this world, I learned everything a fetus takes from its mother's body, and it's a lot. There are all kinds of vitamins, minerals, and such the baby needs that it gets however it can from the mother, which is why prenatal vitamins are so important.

Thank God we were supplied with those in this town because, had I not been taking them all this time, I'm fairly certain I would be a husk at this point.

Well, in fairness, that's likely not true. I realize the curse provided all sorts of measures to prevent us from dying because of "little" technicalities like pregnant women not being able to give birth, but that doesn't excuse the fact that WE WERE PREGNANT FOR 28 YEARS.

No, I'm not getting over that. Do you understand how hard it is to be pregnant? Can you not grasp the strain on your body  _and_ your mind? You have no idea how inconvenient life is until your baby discovers your bladder is a soft place to rest and decides to rest upon it every 10 or 15 minutes. You cannot know pain until your baby accidentally kicks your spine. You cannot understand torment until your child decides to start kicking you at 2AM for two weeks straight.

You don't know frustration until you can no longer bend over to put your own shoes on or can barely pull your underwear and/or pants up. You don't know irritation until you finally come to the conclusion that, if you really are having THAT much trouble with the fact your legs look like they belong to bigfoot, you're going to  _have_  to ask your husband to shave them. You don't know anger until you've had the hundredth random person decide that, somehow, it is perfectly fine to touch your belly because you're pregnant.

It's bad enough for the last trimester, but trying dealing with that for nearly three decades.

It's a small miracle I didn't kill someone. Thanks but no thanks; I'm not doing that again any time soon.

Shortly after I finally had my daughter, I told my husband that, if he ever got me pregnant again anytime soon, I was going to… let's just say that, if I told you exactly what I'd do to him, this letter probably wouldn't get printed.

Don't get me wrong. I love my child more than words can describe. I'm so happy she's in our lives, and, each day I look at her, I thank the gods that I was blessed enough to be able to have a child. That doesn't mean I had to like being pregnant forever.

I don't suppose I have a specific point to this letter. I'm not calling people to action in order to make some civil or political wrong right. I'm not asking for us to step up and take responsibility for some action that needs to take place. I'm not pointing out how some of the other letters to the editor of this paper are being ridiculous. I think I just needed to vent because goodness knows I'd never be able to pin Regina Mills down long enough to rant at her for about three hours on the sh-t she put me through for 28 years.

I'm not saying I would be opposed should the opportunity arise. I did actually call into City Hall to ask for an appointment to discuss this with Mayor Mills about a week ago, but that personal assistant of hers said, and I'm not making this up, "With all due respect ma'am, I cannot think of a single way I could convince the Mayor to  _not_  find a way to maneuver out of a meeting with you based on what it is you'd like to talk to her about. I think I've seen snakes less slippery in their ability to sidestep situations than Mayor Mills when she doesn't want to be bothered with a topic of conversation, and I can assure you she doesn't want to be bothered. Now, I can and will set up a date and time for you to come in, but I would bet my last cup of coffee on her having a sudden emergency that keeps coming up whenever your appointment rolls around."

I'd be mad at her if I didn't know she was probably absolutely correct about what would happen, so I told her not to bother and hung up, but then I figured that Regina would probably read a letter in the paper, so here it is.

Regina, if you're reading this, then I want you to know that, although I'm happy I gave birth at a clean, germ free hospital as opposed to on my bed with a midwife inside my germ infested cottage in the middle of the Enchanted Forest, I still think you suck for forcing me to wait 28 years before that could happen.

What? You couldn't put a clause in that curse of yours to give a pregnant sister a break? What the hell? You can remember it's important for our technology to update from time to time or that we'll probably need a psychiatrist, but you can't let me stop having to pee every 15 minutes for 28 years straight?

What a load of crap!

That's all I'm saying. That was complete sh-t.

Finally not a waddling mess of hormones,

Stacy Canton

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think of Cinderella being preggers for 28 years and being the chick who washes people's laundry, and I marvel at the fact she didn't kill Regina with a rusty spoon after the curse broke.


	21. Harold Bacchus, Frustrated Fisherman

Dear Editor,

In the Enchanted Forest, I was a fisherman. I spent long days out at sea catching fish to bring to market. The work was hard, the hours long, and, though I appreciated the quiet solitude of my life because it meant I didn't have to deal with the strange goings on of The Forest, I can't say I was always fine with being alone most of the time. After all, there's only so much comfort a man can find at sea, if you know what I mean?

In Storybrooke, I'm a fisherman. I spend long days out at sea catching fish to bring to market. The work is hard, the hours long, and, though I appreciate the quiet solitude of my life because it means I don't have to deal with the strange goings on of the town, I can't say I'm always fine with being alone most of the time. After all, there's only so much comfort a man can find at sea, if you know what I mean?

Back in The Forest, I used to visit my favorite tavern girl whenever I wanted to scratch that particular itch, but I can't do that here, and I'm a little angry with the fact this land has deprived me of my favorite tavern girl. I understand there are places in this land, such a one called Reno, in which a man can still find a nicely priced wench to bed down with for the night, and I don't understand why we can't do that here.

Before you go off and start blabbing about how offensive I'm being, I'm going to tell you to stop it before you start it. Back home, there were plenty of women who went into the trade  _voluntarily_ because they made good money and they liked it. I'm not saying they all were like that because I ran across more than a few that weren't, but what I'm saying is, if a woman wants to do something like that, then why not let her? There're plenty of my friends that I know, both men  _and_ women, who would be happy to pay what the service is worth.

Besides, all the laws preventing me from paying a little to get a little are all based on the morals of this land, and we're not from this land. No one from The Forest would ever look down their nose at a woman or a man trying to make a living, and I just don't understand why we all've decided to follow a bunch of moral codes that come from a religion most of us don't even follow.

There's a lot we got from the curse that I'm happy for, like electricity and plumbing, but some of this other stuff is enough to make a man want to punch a wall or two. All these regulations on who and when and where you can get a good drink or a good woman (or man if that's what you want) doesn't make any sense for our town. We're not from here, so why should we have to follow morality codes from here?

You know what I think? I don't think we should, is what. The world outside of our town doesn't even know we exist, so why shouldn't we get rid of some of the laws they force their people to follow out there, or, better yet, why not take in a few from places where how we lived back in The Forest is how they live there, like that Reno place?

I'm all for having something a little more civil at that tavern than what used to be because, when I get back to port, the last thing I want to do is claw my way out of a fist fight with a bunch of drunken, smelly, sailors. What I want is to be doing something else entirely, but I can't because my favorite wench is now a waitress at Granny's and the laws of this land make it illegal for her to do something that she tells me, every single time I see her, she misses doing.

I don't think anyone can say I'm being too demanding here, and I know some of you are probably going to tell me to call City Hall or some nonsense like that, but everybody knows City Hall isn't going to do nothing about something like this. I talked to that short brunette woman that works there. Ran into her a couple of nights ago at Granny's when I first got back into town. I told her what I thought about all of this, and she told me something like, "You know, they make toys for your particular situation now, or, better yet, you could just ask Nanci out on a date. The cost of dinner and a movie would be about what you'd pay for her in the Enchanted Forest anyway."

She's missing the point, which is that I don't want no date. I just want to let off a little steam, and Nanci don't want no date. She just wants to do what she wants to do and then go about her business, which is what I told that short brunette woman. She told me, "Well then, I suggest you invest in some toys and some decent lube because there is no way I'm going to suggest to Mayor Mills what you're asking. I have lines."

She's lucky this isn't The Forest because I had half a mind to show her what I thought about her attitude, but that's a different letter. Anyhow, what I'm saying isn't anything the rest of us aren't thinking. We shouldn't have to put up with moral codes from a land we never asked to be a part of and can't get away from. There's nothing wrong with going back to how some of the old ways were, now is there?

Frustrated seaman,

Harold Bacchus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, the more of these I do, the more geared toward 'adult themes' they get. Anyone else notice this?


	22. Ann Hawthorne, Tired of the Abuse

Dear Editor,

You know, I'm thinking that all of you in town are starting to conspire against me. In fact, I'm just about positive you are because, the longer we go on, the more crap keeps getting flung my way, and, I've got to tell you, I do  _not_  appreciate being at the bottom of the hill when you people start rolling it.

Look, I think it's safe to say no one is getting much of a response from the Mayor anytime soon, right? I mean, if history has taught us anything over the past couple of years, it's that, as soon as something goes down with Henry, the Mayor is out the door and on the case faster than Snow White or Leroy can tell a secret, so for all of you to keep calling me out in these letters to the editor is a little ridiculous. It's not my fault Regina Mills is more centered on her family and her own happiness than on the wellbeing of the town, and, really, raise your hand if you're surprised by this news.

Yeah, no one is raising their hand, right? Thought so.

Come on, people. Seriously. She cursed all of us to this place out of a need to make herself feel better about life, so can we all get a little perspective here?

First of all, to the local GLAAD and PFLAG community, I'm glad you're here. Really. I mean that. In fact, I don't have enough words to explain how happy I am you're here, but, for the love of all that is still sane about this town, PLEASE stop trying to glitter bomb me in lieu of getting the Mayor. You're not even giving me recovery time, for Pete's sake. There's glitter herpes all over my best suits, my car, and just about anywhere else I go these days, and, frankly, I don't need to be glittered, okay? I proudly carry my card, wear my flannel, and shop at the hardware store. My current girlfriend has threatened to break it off with me if she gets hit with one more of those bombs. You know how hard it is to get a girlfriend in this town? Stop it. I mean it. You do  _not_  want me to start fighting back. I've worked with Regina Mills for far too long. I  _will_  fight dirty. I may not have magic like she does, so I can't throw the glitter back at you, but I have other means, and I can be just a vicious and devious. Do  _not_  test me.

Speaking of the LGBTQ community, let me take this opportunity to say that the Mayor is aware of our existence, and, for what it's worth, she's pleased to hear we've organized. She spoke with the Sheriff's office yesterday regarding speeding up the process of enforcing restraining orders and has already put in a few calls to work on getting those restraining orders moving along faster in court. So, now that you know, maybe you could stop trying to glitter bomb us altogether. What do you say? Let's stop the war before it starts, okay?

And, speaking of wars, I'm not trying to start one with the local parents and concerned citizens. I get it. You want the schools to teach the Enchanted Forest's history. That's great. The Mayor thinks that's great. The Charmings, who were present when I told the Mayor about the this request (though I have no idea why they're around all the time now) think it's great. We all think it's a great idea, so stop accusing me of taking the "wrong side." I'm not. I'm taking the Mayor's side, whatever side that is, and, right now, it is in your favor. Don't muck it up by harassing us about it. I've scheduled her to speak at the next PTA meeting regarding the topic. Go do your thing, and support her and this thing that you want. It's all on you, people.

You know what else is all on you? Supporting each other, and props to Father Mallory for stepping up to support Mario and his 'Faith in Storybrooke' support group. I've gone a couple of times, and it's been a really amazing experience. I know a few of you are wondering if any of the royals are planning on showing up any time soon, to which I can only chuckle at your naiveté. Of course they're not coming. I mean,  _why_  would they come when they have other, more pressing issue to deal with, like Zelena or whatever monster of the month is trying to kill us all? However, Belle French said she might swing by when I talked to her this morning, so there's that. She's not a royal, but she's got more sway than I do, so maybe you can talk to her about what's bothering you? In fact, do. She's in Gold's shop. Go yak her ear off. Please. Mine is about to go numb. I need a break.

I also need a break from the women who were pregnant for 28 years. Look, I am really sorry. I realize I'm not the Mayor, and I completely understand that my apology means  _nothing_ , despite being a sort of proxy for her, but, seriously, I  _am_ sorry. I cannot tell you how sorry I am, so, with that in mind, could you, maybe, stop coming to sit at my booth when I'm at Granny's and explaining – in extreme detail – everything you went through for all of that time? It has come to the point where, against my natural inclination for self-preservation, I've actually blocked the Mayor in her office and proceeded to relay all of your experiences in as much detail as you've given me. In fact, I've delighted in retelling those tales to her during her lunch hour. She's been less than delighted, but I can't say I care anymore. See? I'm taking my life into my hands for you. You're welcome.

And another thing, while I'm on this little rant, to the sailors who seem to think I care if they get any, I don't care. Regina Mills doesn't care. The Charmings probably care but are way too absorbed in their own affairs to pay attention. No one cares, okay? Let me repeat that.  _No. One. Cares._

If you want to spend fifty bucks and blow some… steam, then do it, just don't be obvious about it. What do you think is going to happen, anyway? You think we're going to lock you in a holding cell for that? For how long? Until the royals break  _this_  curse and send us all back  _again¸_  God forbid?

Look, there's not enough money in the world for me to walk into the Mayor's office and tell her that there's a segment of the population who wants to legalize prostitution. It's not going to happen. You want her to know, then you can tell her yourself, and then you can deal with whatever sass she decides to throw at you for that. I get enough sass on a daily basis without adding to it.

You people seem to think there's some kind of simple answer to fix all of the mess in this town, but I have news for you. There isn't. There's not a simple solution because the issues we face aren't simple. Everything about our lives is a complex, interwoven web of situational misfortune, and the best we can do is exactly what we've started doing, which is to fend for ourselves.

Regina Mills is our Mayor only because that is what the curse did; it made her our mayor, but even she admits she's often mayor only in name and not in action. There's just too much going on, and, maybe, we need to hold an election and vote in a new mayor, one that knows the town, the people here, and understands that there are needs that must be fulfilled and issues that must be dealt with if we're to continue on in this land. I have no idea who that person would be because they would need to know and fully understand the political structure of this town, and there are very few of us who do, but I'm sure you people could find someone.

In the meantime, stop cornering me when I'm at the store trying to buy feminine products to discuss your child's educational needs. I can't do anything about it. I'm  _just_  a glorified secretary trying to make it from day-to-day, as I keep saying.

Just trying to get by,

Ann Hawthorne

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm... Ann Hawthorne for Mayor? Nah, probably not. Don't tell her I even suggested it. She'd probably lose what little sanity she has left at the very thought of taking all of that additional responsibility on.


	23. Amy Bogati, Realist

Dear Editor,

You know that saying, "Whatever doesn't kill me only serves to make me stronger"? It's been my personal mantra my entire life.

I told that to myself back in the Enchanted Forest when I managed to escape the impending attack on my village by Queen Regina's men upon her order to kill everyone there when a few dumbly refused to give up Snow White.

I told that to myself whenever a dragon would start to circle the field my family and I tended and we managed to run for shelter before the winged demon could swoop in for the kill, when the ogres would come out to play at night before I could get home from trading my wares and I somehow managed to make it to safety before they found me, when the werewolves would pass by my door on full moons but not try to break it down to get to me, when tax collectors would come and actually take the taxes as opposed to taking something else of mine that was far more personal than money, and when the first curse swept through our land and the purple smoke hit me.

I told that to myself after the first curse was broken and I remembered who I actually was, and I said it again when we thought we were under attack by a rogue werewolf, when the giant came to town and destroyed so much, when the town was nearly destroyed by Regina's "fail safe" device, when the royals brought Peter Pan back and the town was again swept away back from which we'd come.

I told that to myself when we were once again back in the Enchanted Forest and I managed to escape a flying devil monkey, or whenever the old threats returned and I kept my life. As the magic again rolled through the land and I realized were all being cursed yet again, I told myself that, if it didn't kill me, it would make me stronger.

I've kept telling myself this through everything that has happened here recently, from the were-devil-monkeys to the magical fist fights between the Sister Dears to the fact that the Wicked Witch of the West has control over the Dark One and it's clear the regular townspeople here are collateral damage and fodder for the Great Green Witch to use against the other important royalty of this town.

For 23 years, I've been telling myself that whatever doesn't kill me will make me stronger, and, after all of this time, I've finally come to a conclusion. I'm strong enough now, thanks.

Unfortunately, the Universe doesn't seem to agree with me. I just found out what Zelena's master plan is. Leroy's been oversharing again. She wants to cast some kind of spell that will let her travel back in time and change history. She wants to erase Regina from existence, which means a whole lot of things, like Emma Swan and Henry probably wouldn't exist, which I'm sure is troublesome to the royalty.

However, it also means our ruling class back in the Enchanted Forest would be different. It means Regina would never have been Queen; it would likely have been Zelena.

My mind keeps going over scenarios of what it would mean for Zelena to be the Queen as opposed to Regina. How would that have changed my life? What differences would there be? How would this impact how things have gone?

Honestly, the answer is mostly a bunch of, "Nothing's really changing here."

Let's say Zelena does manage to cast this curse and change things. I'm willing to bet the first curse gets cast anyway because Rumple isn't going to change  _his_  plans to get his son back, so we'd all still wind up in Storybrooke, and, whether it's the Charmings or someone else doing it, someone somewhere somehow would manage to break the curse because that's just what happens to curses  _and_  because Rumple needed the curse broken, so we'd eventually get our memories back.

No Henry means none of that Peter Pan nonsense, so we wouldn't get sent  _back_  to the Enchanted Forest because there would be no reason for that to happen. No Regina means we wouldn't have to endure an entire year of magical angst after the curse breaks as she fights to get her son's affections back. No Regina also means Snow White would probably have grown up differently or not at all. I'm willing to bet Zelena would probably have outright killed Snow as opposed to getting chances and never taking them like Regina did, so there wouldn't be a year's long war before the first curse was cast.

Would Zelena be a better ruler? No. Not at all. She's just as ruthless as Regina ever was. In fact, I'm certain it would be a miserable experience to have her as either our Queen or our Mayor, but I can't say my experiences with Regina have been anything less than horrible. Really, we'd just be trading one really evil ruler for another just as equally evil ruler, so I fail to see the real impact on the rest of us.

So, should Zelena manage to pull this off, all that means to me is that most of trying situations that have happened since the first curse was broken wouldn't have happened at all. That's it. That's the only difference, which brings me to my actual point here.

I don't care what Zelena does.

I don't care if she kills Regina. Regina has killed, literally, thousands either by her own hand or by proxy. Karma was eventually going to catch up with her. I don't care if Henry Mills and/or Emma Swan are ever born. They have absolutely no impact on my life whatsoever except to bring more things into it that make me have to repeat my little mantra to myself so I can keep sane. I don't care if Snow White survived into adulthood. She was never really our ruler anyway. She had a good three, maybe four, years before all hell broke loose and the curse was cast. That's hardly worth the trouble, if you ask me.

I don't care, and I don't understand why anyone else among the commoners of this town care because, in truth, nothing about our lives is going to change. Regina or Zelena, it doesn't matter. We're just trading one wicked witch for another. Rumple's still around, and he's the one that matters. Now, go back in time and decide to kill Rumple instead of Regina, and then I might worry because I rather like living in Storybrooke, which likely wouldn't happen with Rumple gone.

All this worry from everyone who isn't an immediate part of the Charming's family or inner circle makes no sense to me at all. Up until a couple of months ago, everyone was ready to string Regina up for her crimes against all of us, and now we're all concerned she might never have existed. Does anyone else see the wrongness of this picture?

Whatever happens, I'll still be working my family's field and trying to avoid dragons or working in Storybrooke and trying to avoid the roaming hands of the drunkards at the Rabbit Hole. No change for me, and I'm certain very little to no change for most of us, so why are we worrying?

Tired of the nonsense of this town,

Amy Bogati

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, I've wondered this myself. Why would the regular folk care who was ruling them when it's clear that it's one evil for another with no real chance of positive change for the past.


	24. Robert Carson, Store Owner

Dear Editor,

Can someone do something about Hood and his band of hooligans, please? Look, I realize he’s new to this land, and, unlike most of us, he doesn’t have a second set of memories, so he doesn’t completely understand how things are done here, but someone needs to fix that and fast.

As most of you know, I own the grocery store, and my profit margin is taking a hit. I know his merry whatevers do a lot of hunting, but they also do a lot of stealing in order to fill in the gaps from whatever they can’t catch. That was fine to do in the Enchanted Forest, and it’s certainly not fine to do here.

Someone needs to sit down and explain the concept of getting a real job to these men. They’re nothing but bums and slackers! The only bit of responsibility they know is how to not get caught, and, frankly, a lot of them are piss poor at even that. The last time they slipped into my store, they stole about $100 worth of items, and, when I caught them in the act, they took off.

Of course, I called the Sheriff’s Department, and I got a deputy I’ve never heard of before. Apparently, Sheriff Nolan is out on leave to take care of his family and Emma Swan hasn’t been reinstated, so this guy, Deputy Dudley, answers and tells me that he’ll look into it.

He’ll look in to it. Pfft! I have it on video! What is there to look into? They’re a bunch of thieves. They need to be arrested! This is outrageous. If they weren’t following that Robin Hood, who is apparently buddy-buddy with the royals, no one would put up with this, but, because they’re good friends with Snow and her lot, I’m supposed to suck it up and eat all that expense?

I think not.

Thieves are thieves regardless of who they might be friends with, and these thieves need to be put in their place. If Robin is such a good guy, then why hasn’t he started getting his little clan of dirty men to begin acclimating to living here? Why hasn’t he started moving them toward getting jobs and finding homes as opposed to living in the forest and stealing from folks like me who are just trying to make an honest day’s living in this town?

He’s not special. He’s not unique. He and his band of mutts can suck it up and do what everyone else is doing, which is working to support themselves.

He’s got a family for God’s sake. What kind of life is that for a boy as young as Roland? And Robin’s wife is back! Surely, _surely_ he wants to provide her with an actual home? He has a real chance to create a good, solid and relatively safe home for them, and he’s choosing to have them live in the woods under a tree branch. How is that responsible or good?

I know the town seems to be in love with the man and his group of lackeys, but those of us who own businesses in town are tired of covering the costs associated with them stealing from us. Just because he’s a famous thief shouldn’t give him a free pass.

Some of you are probably thinking I should go talk to the people in charge. I did. Remember? I called the Sheriff, and, since I tried the Sheriff’s Station and nothing’s been done, I went to the Mayor’s Office. That was a terrible idea. As soon as the words were out of my mouth as to why I was there and what I wanted to talk to Mayor Mills about, Ms. Hawthorne held a hand up to silence me, and told me in no uncertain terms that the topic of Robin Hood was off limits.

Off limits!

She said, “Unless you want to get fire bombed, I suggest you hold your tongue on this one for at least another few weeks. He’s a touchy subject for Mayor Mills right now. If you must say something, perhaps an email would be best?”

So what? Because Mills and Hood had a thing for a couple of days before Swan stupidly brought someone back from the past, I and other honestly concerned citizens can’t talk to our mayor about issues we’re having with him and his men? This is not a monarchy. There is no sympathy just because the Mayor’s heart is broken yet again. Regina Mills can suck it up. Her office is responsible for taking care of us, and that means she can wipe her tears, down a couple shots of cider, and do her job.

This entire town is nuts. I swear it is.

Done with this,

Robert Carson


	25. Cris Santos, Coffee Lover

Dear Editor,

I’m not like everyone else in town. I’m not looking to force the royals to be better law enforcement people. I don’t hold an opinion one way or another on what Mayor Mills should focus her time on. I’m not swayed in any direction about the plight of our economy, our housing market, our social class structure, or the current state of our supplies.

In fact, I’m pretty apathetic to just about everything that gets thrown at us. I mean, it doesn’t matter what I or anyone else says or does. It’s all going to happen anyway, and I figure it’s just best to make the best of whatever, kind of like that Rancher said about a month ago.

I don’t ask for much. I don’t want much. I don’t expect much. It lets me live a pretty small and unfulfilling yet non-disappointed life.

That said, I do have some basic human requirements, and, before you ask, I’ve always been human, thank you. One of those basic requirements is coffee.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that we have coffee in this town, so why am I whining? You’re right to think that, but you’d be wrong about us having coffee in this town. What we have in this town is diner coffee and what’s left of the dwindling supply at the grocery store.

This, my fellow citizens, is a problem.

For, you see, none of that is decent coffee. I’m not sorry nor ashamed to call a spade and spade, and the dark sludge at the diner is terrible. What’s left at the grocery store is a freeze dried mess that once had been coffee but is now nothing more than a sad, sorry excuse for a once wonderful and aromatic bean.

Before the first curse was broken, I used to special order this amazing roast from a place all the way down in Texas of all places. An amazing specialty roast, it was a nice medium yet bold flavor with hints of hazel nut, vanilla, and cream. It was like drinking something from a dream and worth every penny I paid to have it shipped in. I’d ship it in wholesale. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were starting to think I was reselling the stuff.

Obviously, I wasn’t, but I’m down to my very last bag, and I have no way to order more.

I’m not the only one with this particular problem. Ken Hanes has been special ordering a wine from Martha’s Vineyard for decades now, and he’s completely out, which is a travesty because, as many of us know, visiting him and having a glass while listening to him play is a highlight in this town. No more lovely nights and cool guitar enjoyment for us. Ken’s so upset he can’t get is favorite wine anymore that he’s been moping around for the past month.

Kash Desai special orders hummus from I don’t know where, which he uses for some kind of traditional Middle Eastern dish that we’ll never taste again, and then there’s the hospital.

Mike Hwang told me the other day that he went in to grab some antibiotics, and the hospital told him they were rationing what medicine they had left until they could figure out a way to create or replenish their stock, so they suggested a few home remedies and sent him home.

This all really disturbing to me, and I think we should start thinking about other things we’ve been importing into our town that we can’t get anymore, but, mostly, we need to figure out a way for me to get my coffee back because I have needs.

I have coffee needs.

They are not being fulfilled.

All I’m asking for here is some decent coffee. I don’t think this is too much to ask. I’m not asking for anyone to change the pecking order of the town, or change how procedures are done, or anything else momentous like that. I’m just asking for coffee.

In need of my fix,

Cris Santos


	26. Elanor Montgomery, Thespian

Dear Editor,

I am an actor, a thespian. I have been involved in stage productions since I was a small child mewling at my mother’s feet. There is none better than I to qualify quality drama on stage. I live and breathe the theater.

Even in the Enchanted Forest I was more than a mere vagrant. I come from a long, distinguished line of actors in the traveling troupe known as the Ferris Family. I’m certain you’ve heard of us. I am a direct descendant of Felina Ferris, the woman known throughout the Enchanted Forest as the only actor to _ever_ bring a king to tears, and she did so through her brilliant interpretation of Queen Reyna. I’m certain you know of which story I speak.

In Storybrooke, I am the owner of local theater, and I have produced many brilliant dramas and comedies over the years spanning from the ever eloquent Shakespeare to even a few lower class yet no less brilliantly produced musicals from the likes of Rodgers & Hammerstein.

I have dedicated my life to my craft, and, in so doing, I’ve equally dedicated my life to providing the very best the theater has to offer to our citizens. I have sacrificed for the theater, giving everything I have: my blood, my sweat, and my tears.

As such, I feel nothing but disdain for the influx of insulting and demeaning comments from the citizens regarding the list of upcoming shows for the summer season. You all act as though I’ve come to the decision to run these shows based on some arbitrary deciding factor. I assure, _I have not_ , and to insinuate otherwise is beyond offensive.

 _Les Miserables_ is an iconic musical based on an equally iconic book that tells the story of those who suffer in their lives at the hands of their oppressors, yet, despite their leadership’s attempts to keep them downtrodden, love and hope still find a way to prosper and survive. It is not, as some of you have said via my comments box outside the theater, a “lame attempt to create some kind of obvious parallelism between what happens in Storybrooke and what happens in the show.” I beg to differ! What happens in the show is about the human condition, and it cannot be helped if those same themes that run through the show also happen to run through most of our lives. It’s purely a product of art reflecting real life.

 _Mamma Mia!_ Is not an excuse to dress anyone in drag. How very crass to even suggest such a thing. To whomever put the note in my comments box stating, “Yeah, sure, I’d love to see Guy Stevenson in drag, but just make sure he shaves every night because otherwise he’ll just look like a transvestite who doesn’t care,” I can only say that you, whomever you are, are a thoughtless and heartless clod. First of all, this show is a modern classic and a crowd favorite. Second of all, do not insult either Guy or the transvestite community in that way. It’s demeaning to us all.

 _Romeo & Juliet_ is a Shakespearean classic. I cannot imagine how anyone could have issue with the Bard himself, and, yet, you people seem to. There’s nothing more endearing than story of two people in love. To whomever wrote, “The last thing we need is a true love story that doesn’t end in a happy ending. We have enough of those now days,” all I can say is that you clearly have missed the point of the play. It’s not about happy endings because life isn’t about happy endings. It’s about finding love, regardless of how long the two people have to be in love. Of course, I don’t know why I’m wasting my time attempting to explain this to you. Clearly, you don’t care or don’t understand to.

And, to whoever it is that doesn’t seem to appreciate _Mame_ , all I can say is that you lack any taste or class. I’ll not even dignify your comments with an actual response.

People, I am _trying_ to bring to this town a sense of culture. I’m not here to present some kind of lowbrow entertainment. If you want to watch _Rocky Horror Picture Show_ , then go talk to Bill Cates, the owner of the movie theater. Don’t keep stuffing my comments box with demands for _Priscilla, Queen of the Dessert_.

I wouldn’t have bothered to write anything at all in reply to any of this, but the last comment in my box was the final straw. To the person who wrote:

_**I don’t think you appreciate how much money you could bank if you did a once a month show for either Rocky or Priscilla. Just think about it, you’d have regular attendance, a guarantee of income, and who wouldn’t pay to see Regina Mills dressed up as Dr. Frank N Furter?** _

First of all, Regina is a woman. Therefore, she can’t be a transvestite. She’d be more likely to be Columbia, not that I want to encourage this lewd train of thought regarding our mayor. Secondly, I refuse to put on productions that encourage audiences to throw things my employees then have to clean off the floor, which leads me to my final point.

Plainly spoken, it’s not going to happen; stop asking me.

Now, I’ve have provided quality production to the masses for well over forty years, including both time here and in the Enchanted Forest. I do not need a group of prepubescent juvenile delinquents telling me, repeatedly, what I should be producing simply so they can get a jolly or two. If you want that sort of thrill, go to the docks.

Above the riffraff,

Eleanor Montgomery

 


	27. Shane Westbrook, Surly

Dear Editor,

Is anyone going to make a general announcement about the fact Regina Mills is no longer mayor? I realize a lot is happening right now what with the ice wall, that ice princess or ice queen or ice bad guy or the month or whatever, and I know we haven't exactly had a chance to have a town hall discussion on it since the curse was recast, but it'd be nice to know who our supposedly elected officials are these days.

Yesterday I heard through the grapevine while I was eating breakfast at the diner that there was a fireside chat in the mayor's office to answer questions about what was happening in the town but that meeting wasn't broadcast anywhere. There was no TV broadcast, nothing went up online about it, and there wasn't even a mention of it on the only radio station we get in this town.

Nothing. Not a thing.

What the hell?

I have  _a lot_ of questions about the general state of affairs of the town right now, as do a whole bunch of other people, and there's a fireside chat about the state of affairs for the town that only 15 people know anything about. Why was this a good idea?

I was so pissed off about this that I went to Town Hall to talk to the mayor about it. It's so unlike Regina Mills to hold a State of the Town address without making sure the entire populace has access to it that I was positive this thing (whatever it is) with Robin Hood had made her finally lose the good sense she's always had about how to run things.

Imagine my surprise when I wasn't greeted by Ms. Hawthorne but by Happy who informed me that  _Mayor Blanchard_  was in a meeting and would have to get back to me regarding my issue.

MAYOR BLANCHARD WHAT?!

WHEN WERE WE GOING TO BE TOLD ABOUT THIS?!

There is a wall of ice surrounding the town, we have no where we can go, limited entertainment, nothing to really do, and no one in the monarchy could take 15 minutes to hop on the only television station we get in this town to announce the change in mayorship?

This is not okay. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to keep us in the dark,  _especially_  when the gods only know what kind of super destructive force is going to put the beat down on us next. We need to remain informed. So far, no one's even bothered to explain the giant snowman from hell that whipped through town the other day. If Regina was still in office, we would have been made aware of the situation.

Remember when Zelena and her monkeys were flying around town? At least we knew what was going on with that. Regina held a town hall meeting, and she also did a lot of news interviews to keep us updated, so I really don't think it'd be too much for Blanchard to put the baby down for two seconds and give us at least a little update on the town website about what the f—k is happening in Storybrooke right now.

David Nolan walking around town saying, "Calm down, everybody. Everything is going to be okay," is about as useful as Killian Jones' right hand. Sometimes, I honestly think the leaders of this town completely forget there are real people living here as opposed to background fodder to make their lives look more interesting.

Surly and annoyed,

Shane Westbrook


	28. Jack S., Entrepreneur and Car Salesman

Dear Editor,

You know that saying in this world about making lemonade out of the lemons life gives you? Well, I've decided that's exactly what we should do. It's either that, or we end up with a bunch of lemons and no space to move, so I've come up with a plan to do something about that wall of ice surrounding us.

Now, before you laugh at my idea, I want you to really think about it. Just picture it…

_**Winter Wonderland Retreat** _

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Jack, why would we need a theme park all about winter when we live in Maine?" And, ordinarily, I'd agree with you, but this wall presents a unique opportunity that shouldn't be passed up.

Think about it. A few of our more entrepreneurial people here in town with myself heading the project, of course, could easily create a fun and safe environment full of family fun adventures in which we could teach our young people how to things such as how to scale a wall of ice, how to survive in the cold if you get lost during the winter months, how to check for signs of hypothermia, and other lifesaving lessons all under the watchful eye of the highly trained and skilled WWR team of survival specialists.

Where else and when else could we find this amazing chance to safely teach these life lessons without risking accidentally crossing the town's barrier line because we were too far into the woods and hadn't realized where we were or having to worry about a pesky, accidental thaw?

It's a great chance for some forward thinking minds to step up and present not only a chance for new jobs in the town but a chance for a new source of entertainment. Instead of staring at the thick, impenetrable wall of ice and dreading our unquestioned entrapment until such time as the royals find a way to break through, why not consider this a great opportunity for a staycation?

Some of you may be thinking about right now that what I'm proposing is outlandish, and it is, but that's what makes it exciting!

In the Enchanted Forest, all of you knew me as the bearer of things that go bump in the night. The scary, the terrifying, the things that scare children when the lights go out were all beings that followed my lead, and I could see where you might think I'm making this suggestion as some elaborate set up to somehow frighten the children again, but I can assure you I am not.

Just like the rest of you, I am looking to find something positive and productive that adds to our community, and I think Winter Wonderland Retreat is just the thing to do that. Since we've been in Storybrooke, you've come to me for all of your major purchases from cars to boats to off road vehicles, and I've never steered a single one of your wrong. I won't do that now!

Come on, everyone, let's make the best of what we have and make it work for us!

What do you say?

Cordially yours,

Jack S., Entrepreneur and Wholesale Vehicle Salesman


	29. Olga Romanov, Special Thing Maker

Dear Editor,

Apologies for English. Is not so good.

In old world, I was goose. Spend many hours swimming, watching eggs, and doing bird things. Was special goose. People came from far away for my feathers. Special feathers. Write name with quill would bring good fortune to owner of name.

Much respect as goose.

In new world, not so much with the respect. Curse made me human. As human, no good fortune. My English is not so good, but there are no others who speak language curse gave to me. I know no one here. Curse took me from family. I am alone. Is very hard making the friends because no one want talk to me. Is hard in understanding, I know.

It fine in first curse. I lived in woods, alone. I make living making things. Candles and soaps and things people want special. Was special maker of things. People came from far away on other side of town, tell me special thing want, and I make.

I make for special people and not so special people and all people. I make. They buy. Was hard work but good. I live okay. I make apple smelling things for mayor and sandalwood smelling things for Ruby and cardamom smelling things for Hopper. I make good, and they always buy from me. Was simple life. Was good life.

Second curse make life very hard. No home this time. Is gone. Tents and people there now. No home, no place to make special things. No special things, no money. No money, very hard to live.

I try. I make special things in basement of church. I make special things for mayor, but mayor is no want now. Say too busy to buy. I make special things for Red, but she no buy. Say she no want smell like Ruby. I make special things for Hopper. He buy. Good man.

There are others like me. Curse leave homes behind, make life harder. No family brought here. Alone. People in town not care. Too caught up in magic troubles. Forget second curse leave some homeless. Church helps, but I want home and to make my special things again!

New curse bring new people and new homes here, leave some old people and homes behind. Is confusing. Is frustrating. I try. We try, but I have little, and second curse took so much. Why?

Why this curse take my home? Why people stop buying my special things?

I no want hand out. I want support self. Is hard, but I try. I learn. Belle teach me to read and write. Father Mallory teach me how maybe to speak English better. I ask people of town to remember people like me. Give help. Give jobs. Buy special things from us. We not lazy or thieves or dirty. We are working.

Always trying,

Olga Romanov


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